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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/ontuscanhillsvenOOvill 




SlKl.ET SCEMi, SIE.NA. 



^^^>a^^^77^ 




ON 



TUSCAN HILLS 



VENETIAN WATERS 



LINDA VILLARI 

I 

'"in change unchanged," "in the golden shell" 



Z^' 




ILLUSTRATED BY MRS. ARTHUR LI 






A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 

1887 




^ 



110:427 
Via 



By uransfei 

APR 6 1915 




CONTENTS. 



®n ^U0can Ibille* 



I. A TUSCAN VILLA 



n. BARGA 



in. THE ABETONE 



IV. THE PALIO OF SIENA 



V. AN APENNINE SANCTUARY 



VI. THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN 



VII. ITALIAN MOVING 



3 

27 

71 

9S 
125, 

135 
155 



vi CONTENTS. 



Venetian Matcre* 



^^^^^^ 



PAGE 



I. SUMMER IN VENICE ... ... ... ... 1 83 

II. CAMPO SAN SAMUELE ... ... ... ... 1 97 

III. BY SIDE CANALS ... ... ... ... 211 

IV. ON THE LAGOONS ... ... ... ... ... 223 

V. ST. FRANCIS IN THE DESERT ... ... ... 239 

VI. FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK ... ... ... 253 

VII. AT THE ARSENAL ... ... ... ... 271 





ILLUSTRATIONS. 



STREET SCENE, SIENA 

A TUSCAN VILLA 

THE VAL D'aRNO FROM THE TERRACE 

THE VILLA TERRACE 

PALIO AT SIENA 

AN EPISODE OF THE PALIO 

FONTE BRANDA 

CAMPO S. SAMUELE 

CANAL ORFANO 

S. FRANCESCO NEL DESERTO 



I'AGE 

Frontispiece 

7 

II 

19 

103 

109 

117 

189 

229 

245 



I 



i 



I 



®n Tuscan Ibills 



k 



I. 

A TUSCAN VILLA 



//iPt^ ^^^^^/tA^^^^^^K. 




H Xluscan l^illa. 







N a spur of the steep hillside beyond 
Settignano, four miles to the north-east 
of Florence, stands the Villa Gamberaia. 
It is a sturdy, oblong mansion, facing 
the western sun. It is two-storied, brown - roofed, 
and its lower windows are sternly barred. From 
either end of Its eastern front balconied arches 
stretch out like arms, and lead by hidden stairways 
to the chapel at the corner of the avenue, and the 
garden on the southern side. And though these 



ON TUSCAN HILLS. 



arches are plainly an after - thought, and out of 
harmony with the grand severity of the main 
building, they are not unpleasant to the eye, and 
add to the quaint charm of this rural palace. The 
Gamberaia is a typical villa of the late Renaissance 
period, and its founder, Messer Zenobio Lapi, whose 
grim portrait decorates the saloon, must have been 
a man of lordly tastes as well as substance. No 
position could have been better chosen, no outlay 
spared in planning its groves and gardens. It clings 
midway on the olive-clad slopes rising from the 
basin of the Arno to the pine-fringed ridge that 
sweeps round from Monte Ceceri to Compiobbi ; 
and its ilex woods and cypresses interrupt the soft 
monotony of the grey-green foliage above and below 
its terraced walls. It is approached by a precipitous 
lane from Settignano ; a range of giant cypresses 
guards its gates, and it has an avenue of the same 
trees clipped to a broad flat surface about ten feet 
from the ground. There is a great grass terrace 
before the western front bordered by a low wall 




A TUSCAN VILLA. 



A TUSCAN VILLA. 



set with stone dogs and lions, and commanding a 
glorious prospect. You look down on the City of 
Flowers across a sea of greenery — olives and vines 
and gardens and cornfields ; you see all its gracious 
coronal of tower-capped hills, its branching valleys 
to the south, a stretch of plain dotted with towns 
and villages innumerable, a gleam of the river here 
and there, and curve beyond curve of mountain 
lines, crowned by the translucent Carrara peaks, and 
the advanced guard of the Central Apennines still 
whitened by lingering snows. In the foreground to 
the right, across an interval of olives and corn, a 
white-belfried church crowns the hill of Settignano ; 
while the pine-clad ridge beyond, and the amphi- 
theatre of Maiano, with the massive tower of Mr. 
Leader's villa below Vinclgllata, are delightful details 
of the middle distance. And this view, beautiful as 
it is in mere outline, wears a different charm at every 
hour of the day. In early morning Florence is a 
faintly tinted bas-relief against a background of 
vaporous hills ; towards evening its domes and 



lo ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

cupolas are as dusky jewels set In a verdant cup ; 
at sunset it is flooded with golden light, while the 
sky to the south and east is luminous sea-green 
or delicate blue besprinkled with carmine cloudlets 
fading to ashes of roses. Or perhaps storm banners 
are abroad, and the lurid orange light to the west Is 
barred with black and grey. 

Our sky scenery is ever new, just as the fleeting 
cloud-shadows for ever change the face of our hills. 
Dearest of all moments, perhaps, Is when the after- 
glow has burnt out and the value of every mountain 
line is clearly defined, and pine and cypress are 
intensely black against the sky. For then the great 
dome of Santa Maria del Flore assumes a gloomy 
grandeur. Florence is a city of mystery, and you 
scarcely rejoice when gleaming chains of yellow 
light again transform It into a smiling abode of 
men. Neither from Bellosguardo nor Flesole nor 
other well-known posts of vantage does Florence 
wear so pictorial an aspect. No meanness of modern 
stucco, no cross lines of chessboard streets are visible 



A TUSCAN VILLA, 13 

from this Settlgnano hillside. Beyond olives and 
vineyards you see the city clasping the river, worthily 
crowned by Brunelleschi's dome and Arnolfo's tower, 
and with all lesser spires and belfries grouped in 
graceful order. 

But this grand outlook is not the only charm of our 
Gamberaia. The house itself is an ideal summer 
abode, with great vaulted rooms round a cloistered 
court, whence a doorless stairway on either side 
gives straight, steep access to the upper floor. The 
lofty entrance-hall looks to the west, and measures 
about eighty feet by thirty. This also opens on the 
courtyard in a straight line with the eastern gate- 
way, so that a fine current of air is always to be 
had. Its scanty furniture is in keeping with the 
architecture : straight-backed chairs and huge tables 
of medieval build, and great battle-pieces and por- 
traits by old, if deservedly unknown artists. Sundry 
mysterious recesses and secret stairs in the walls 
are suggestive of past romance, and from one of 
the enormous cellars stretching under and around 



14 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

the house runs a subterranean passage communi- 
cating with the upper garden. This, however, has 
been long blocked up. 

Several of the doors are surmounted by Latin 
inscriptions, setting forth how the mansion was built 
in the year of our Lord M DCX, by Ser Zenobio Lapi, 
and how it was enlarged and completed by his de- 
scendants some fifteen years later. After changing 
hands several times, it became a possession of the 
Gondi, then passed to the Counts Capponi, who sold 
it to a French gentleman, to whose family it still 
belongs. It is said to have been a Medici villa, but 
the well-known balls are absent from the various 
escutcheons on the walls, and there is no historic 
record of their ownership. It is true that a Gam- 
beraia was numbered among their estates, but there 
are three other villas of that name in the neighbour- 
hood of Florence. Even the derivation of the 
word is uncertain. Some say that the ground was 
once held by the Gamberelli family ; others that a 
little lake formerly existent in the valley below and 



A TUSCAN VILLA. 15 

well stocked with gambe^x (crayfish) wa^ the origin 
of the title. The only historic personage who has 
any discoverable connection with the Gamberaia Is 
one of our own times. 'Napoleon III. inhabited 
it for some months when he was Prince Louis 
Napoleon. His father lay 111 In Florence, and for 
political reasons he was not allowed to reside In the 
city. He must have known sounder slumber in the 
quiet yellow chamber to the south than he ever 
slept afterwards amid the imperial splendour of the 
Tuilerles. 

Whether the Medici had a hand In them or not, 
certainly the grounds of the Gamberaia were planned 
on a princely scale, and with various dividing walls 
and stout iron gates that, together with the secret 
passage, show a princely regard for personal safety. 

The eastern front looks on a narrow lawn nearly 
four hundred yards In length. At one end, behind 
neglected rose-beds, broken fountain and rockwork, 
rises a screen of mighty cypresses a hundred feet in 
height. At the other Is a statue-decked balustrade 



i6 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

overlooking a billowy sea of olives, a reach of the 
Arno, and a delicate interchange of hill and valley. 
This long stretch of lawn is one of the prides of the 
Gamberaia. No other villa far and near can boast so 
great an extent of level space, and beyond the vase- 
crowned wall of the upper garden, it is bordered by 
a close box hedge, on which three persons might 
easily lie abreast. 

" God Almightie first planted a Garden. And 
indeed it is the Purest of Human Pleasures. It is 
the greatest Refreshment to the Spirits of Man." 
Thus Lord Bacon, and there was much at the 
Gamberaia to remind us of the statesman's ideal 
pleasaunce. For it is duly divided into three parts, 
and has a '' greene " at the entrance, although of far 
smaller extent than the four acres prescribed by our 
author. Likewise it has two fair alleys of grass 
hedged with clipped box and cypress that give out 
their fragrance to the sun ; and, instead of covert 
alleys, has groves of ancient ilex trees with gnarled 
and twisted trunks. One of these lies open to the 



A TUSCAN VILLA. 17 



east and '' looks abroad into the fields," and over 
rolling olive slopes to the turn of the hills by 
Compiobbi. It has evergreens ''rounded like 
Welts," though these have expanded in course of 
years into monstrous globes of foliage. And in the 
middle of the main garden, where vines and vege- 
tables, fruit-trees and Egyptian wheat are bordered 
with pink and red roses, there is a fountain where 
Cupid on a dolphin " sprinkleth water " on the 
goldfish below, and can on occasion shoot jets of 
spray almost as high as the eaves of the house. 
Across the grass, and directly opposite the eastern 
door, is a narrow enclosure of the true rococo style. 
It has miniature flower-beds and paths; a fine oval 
fountain of granite, with graceful handles, set in a 
circular carved basin, decorates the alcove at its end. 
Stone deities and troubadours are set in niches 
round its walls and draped with climbing weeds, 
while two dainty flights of steps on either side com- 
municate with the ilex wood and the upper garden. 
Great bushes of lavender guard these steps with 

3 



1 8 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

their fragrant spikes, and roses lean down from the 
trellised arbours that are fit entries to the treasury 
of flowers above. For there HHes and carnations, 
heliotropes and geraniums are ranged in tempting 
order, and, with hundreds of lemon trees in huge 
earthern vases, crowd the air with a symphony of 
scent. Pomegranates are putting forth their buds 
of flame, and the rose-oleanders coming into bloom 
by the wall that is crowned with tall white lilies. 
Here, too, is a large fountain with a "fair receipt of 
water," peopled with goldfish and over-grown with 
water-lilies. And when the sun beats too fiercely 
on these flowery terraces, a gate by the empty 
orangery leads to the second ilex wood, where the 
light plays pretty tricks among the glossy leaves, 
and you look down a vista of twisted trunks to an 
open space, framed in dark greenery, that might 
well serve as the set scene of some classic idyll. 
And by this cool descent you find your way, through 
another gate, back to the long lawn by the rose- 
festooned cypress trees. 



A TUSCAN VILLA. 21 



This summer Paradise, musical with bird voices 
and the hum of bees, is as secluded from the world 
as if forty miles, instead of four, divided it from 
Florence. Only one small villa lies beyond it ; 
then nothing but olives and corn, and one or two 
scattered cottages, right up to the crest of the hill 
above Compiobbi. There, by a ruined chapel of the 
Holy Cross, where a few cypresses point to heaven, 
you overlook another reach of the Arno, a cluster of 
picturesque villas, crowding summits, and the dark 
woods of sweet Vallombrosa nestling in the folds of 
the hills below the sun-baked curves of the Consuma 
Pass. 

In searching for local romance we learnt that the 
archway spanning the little lane at our gates was 
supposed to be haunted by a spinning ghost, and 
that the country folk did not willingly pass through 
it after dark. It was disappointing to be also told 
that the legend originated in a trick played by a 
boy years ago, and recently confessed by him to the 
owners of the Gamberaia. But superstition is hard 



22 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

to kill, and the Settlgnano peasantry cling to many 
primitive beliefs. They place rosemary in their 
windows to keep away evil spirits ; they prefer the 
charms and nostrums of a wise woman down in the 
valley to the scientific treatment of the local doctor ; 
and they ascribe cholera and all epidemics to the 
effect of poisons wilfully scattered by government 
agents. 

Settignano itself is a delightfully pretty and well- 
to-do village, or rather — I beg its pardon — fraction 
of the township of Fiesole. The road to it from 
Florence has no suburban ugliness. It winds 
through fields and vineyards, and climbs the ascent 
among the olives with no walls to impede the 
spreading view over hill and valley. Runlets of 
clear water trickle down beside low hedges of sweet- 
briar ; poppies and gladiolus and love-in-the-mist 
are ready to your hand among the corn, and brown- 
roofed farms emerge from a sea of greenery. The 
carriage road proper ends on the triangular piazza, 
where a realistic statue of Tommaseo suggests 



A TUSCAN VILLA. 23 



sympathy with modern thought, and a much-muti- 
lated monument to Septimlus Severus records the 
mediaeval beHef that that emperor was the founder 
of Settignano. As a matter of fact, it can boast a 
far older origin, on the testimony of ancient inscrip- 
tions that have been dug up close by. One rough, 
paved track leads through the village to an outlying 
mountain hamlet, another dips down to the Gam- 
beraia. 

The people of Settignano are thriving and 
energetic. They have a little open-air theatre where 
performances are often given, and they are slowly 
erecting another on a more ambitious scale. They 
still preserve traditions of art ; and if no great 
sculptors are born among them as in the days of 
Desiderio da Settignano, or their foster child, 
Michelangelo Buonarotti, they have an inherited 
facility for working in stone and marble. They are 
also very skilful in Florentine mosaic, and nearly 
every house has its wheel and bench for the cutting 
of gems. The big mosaic manufactory near the 



24 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

Villa Michelangelo has given much development 
to this delicate industry. 

The church Is not interesting. It has a curious 
old pulpit of grey granite, but its many pictures are 
below mediocrity. But the neighbouring chapel of 
the Misericordia contains one of Deslderlo's best 
works, a bas-relief of the Madonna and Child 
executed in his daintiest style. 

But the artists of Settlgnano must not make me 
forget the musicians of the Gamberala. Spring was 
late, and the nightingales were still In full song 
towards the end of May. They dwelt In the ilex 
groves, and 

" never elsewhere in one place, 
I knew so many nightingales." 

Their jocund voices gladdened our days and nights. 
We seldom saw '' their bright, bright eyes," but even 
In the stillest hours of hot summer noons there was 
always a pleasant domestic stir among the nests over- 
head In the thick green foliage. And about an hour 
before midnight their evening concerts would begin — 



A TUSCAN VILLA. 2$ 



" With skirmish and capricious passagings, 
And murmurs musical and swift jug, jug, 
And one low piping song, more sweet than all, 
Stirring the air with such a harmony 
That, should you close your eyes, you might almost 
Forget it was not day." 



But as time went on their tuneful voices were less 
often heard. Even nightingales are oppressed by 
family cares, and, like young ladies, apt to give up 
their music after they are married. The blackbirds, 
however, were untiring singers, and continued to 
greet us with their sweet if flippant love duet. One 
sings, '' Ben fitio ti vedo ; " the other replies, " Se ttc 
mi vedi, vieni a me'' — '' I see thee, my sweet." '' If 
thou seest me, come to me." But in English the 
words scarcely fit the pretty strain. 

The passage from spring to summer was a 
leisurely pageant this year. When first we came to 
our Tuscan villa the fields were fringed with the 
azure flames of the scented iris ; we saw the corn 
plots change from blue to yellow-green, and then to 
tawny gold ; we saw haymakers tossing the fragrant 



23 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

grass that was all ablaze with poppy and gladiolus ; 
and we saw the long swathes of bearded wheat fall 
before the reaper's sickle. The clamorous cicale 
sawed all day, as though grinding the heat ; 
crickets chirped all night ; hot mists rose from the 
plain ; summer lightning flashed from the skies ; and 
the last fireflies — they go with the corn — wove their 
gleaming devices in the air. The starlit terrace 
became our evening saloon, and the songs of the 
young girl with the guitar leaning against the stone 
lion on the wall were often interrupted by the cry of 
the screech owl or the softer note of the dark bird 
that flew so heavily down from the roof to the olives 
below. But all things must have an end, and just 
as the young swallows were learning to fly, we 
looked our last on the glittering, bright city and 
dusky hills ; and then in the haze of early morning 
drove down our cypress avenue, bound for wind- 
swept heights long miles away from Villa Gamberaia. 



. II. 

BARGA 




Bavo^' ' 




WENTY miles to the north of Lucca, 
nine from Lucca's well-known baths, is 
a little mountain town, which not one 
traveller in a hundred thinks of visiting. 
Yet, historically, artistically, and archaeologically, 
Barga Is Interesting enough to be worth a longer 
deviation from the beaten track. In the first place, 
its position is almost unrivalled for natural beauty. 
Perched on the southern spur of Monte Romeccio, 
itself an outwork of the Garfagnana Apennines 
which divide Tuscany from Lombardy, it commands 

^ This article originally appeared in Fraser's Magazine^ and is now 
reprinted by kind permission of Messrs. Longmans. 



30 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 



a vast extent of the lovely valley of the Serchio, and 
faces that most majestic mountain the Pania alia 
Croce and the panorama of the northern flanks of 
the Serravezza and Carrara ranges. The great 
dome of the Pania towers above all other peaks, 
and although of no tremendous altitude —being only 
seven thousand feet above the sea level — is very 
grand in outline and effect. To its left is the fan- 
tastic Monte Forato, pierced by a natural arch. 
The opening is near the summit of the pinnacle, and 
seen from the terrace of Barga cathedral might be a 
stray half-moon caught in its fall from the sky. It 
is said that on one day of the year the sun sets im- 
mediately behind this opening, which then yawns 
like the portal of a world of flame. And if we lower 
our glance from this noble line of peaks into the Ser- 
chio valley and towards the barricade of mighty hills 
walling it in from Northern Italy, the eye rests in 
all directions on the loveliest details of Italian land- 
scape. It is mountain scenery shorn of all austerity ; 
nature the mother, not the step-mother. 



BARGA. 3r 

Directly opposite, across the Serchio, is the Httle 
town of Gallicano, crowned by a lofty church tower, 
and backed by the steep cliffs through which the 
Turrita torrent cleaves its way to the river. Hemp 
and vines and Indian corn, and patches of pasture 
and woodland enamel the valley below in varied 
shades of greenery. A succession of wooded ridges 
and spurs invade the land, dive here and there into 
deep ravines and start up in cypress-crested crags. 
All things speak of peace and plenty. Substantial 
cottages are dotted about on all sides ; villas and 
towers, hamlets and villages, climb far up among the 
chestnuts on the slopes behind the town. These 
mountains are no destructive tyrants, but rather 
sheltering guardians to whom their human children 
lovingly cling. 

The ridge-like promontory, on which Barga stands, 
is guarded on either side by a torrent coursing 
through a deep ravine. Round the greater part 
of its walled circuit the ground falls precipitously ; 
indeed, behind the town the mule path from the 



32 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

second of its two gates crosses the gorge on a 
narrow causew^ay. The chief gate is on the high 
road, but you cannot drive through the archway ; for 
no vehicle may enter Barga. But as the last two 
miles and more are a steep and continuous ascent, it 
is well for the horses that their work ends perforce 
at the gate. From this point also we command the 
wondrous prospect of domes and peaks and jagged 
crests, illumined by the shifting lights of a stormy 
August afternoon. But this is by no means our first 
visit, and we know that grander still is the scene 
from the terrace before the church. 

Looking at the stern and narrow gateway of the 
town, we think of all the vicissitudes it has seen, 
how often it has been thrown open to admit a con- 
quering host ; how often, too, the gallant men of 
Barga have joyfully rushed through it after some 
brilliant repulse of the invading forces. Was not 
the great Condottiere Piccinino himself signally 
routed on the ridge without and compelled to raise 
the siege of Barga in ignominious haste ? For this 



BARGA. 33 

little town, that In official parlance Is no town at all, 
but simply a castello, has stood an unusual number 
of sieges, more Indeed than many far more important 
places. 

But it Is hardly fitting to recount Barga's fortunes 
outside her gates. First let us take the reader 
inside and through her steep ways, and Into her 
churches and up to the Arringo. Then, perhaps, 
he may feel some interest In the tale of this warrior 
eyrie, which, as the key of the Garfagnana district, 
was always a bone of contention between Church 
and Empire, Guelph and Ghibelline, Lucca and 
Florence. 

To the right of the gate, where the walls are 
highest — those walls that have more than once been 
breached, and once at least razed to the ground — is 
the Pallone ground ; and graceful players in white 
frilled tunics are enjoying a quiet practice with the 
huge leather balls before the game fairly begins. 
There had been a great match, we were told, on the 
previous day, and all those turf seats ranging to the 

4 



34 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

top of the bastion yonder, where that fine cedar of 
Lebanon spreads its branches, had been crowded 
with spectators. The old-world game of Pallone is 
well suited to this old-world Barga ; and we can 
imagine how generation after generation of similar 
holiday crowds have trooped through the gate to see 
Pallone played, whenever times were quiet and no 
Lucchese or Pisan marauders were ravaging the 
country side. 

Mounting a steep and narrow street — wide in 
comparison with many of the rest — and lined with 
substantial stone mansions, some of which boast 
Venetian-Gothic windows — threadinor one or two 
zigzag lanes and skirting part of a high wall, tufted 
with maidenhair and capers, we soon reach the 
Cathedral Piazza, locally known as the Arringo. 
The title explains itself. Barga is poor in piazzas ; 
space was precious in the days when it was danger- 
ous for men to plant their dwellings outside the 
walls, among the C3'presses to the front or the chest- 
nuts at the back of the town, and this wide terrace 



BANG A. 35 

and the level greensward along the Duomo's flank, 
commanding the whole mass of Barga's roofs, was 
undoubtedly the best possible spot on which to 
harangue [arringare] Barga's people in all public 
emergencies. 

The men of Barga, a hardy, vigorous race, tall of 
stature and famed in all time for their love of free- 
dom and martial spirit, were well aware of the 
military importance of their citadel, and by no 
means willing to bend before the tyranny of 
Lucca. It is only necessary to glance over the 
wide extent of hill and valley, mountain passes and 
winding river course visible from this breezy 
terrace, to understand why the possession of Barga 
should have been so hotly contested by rival States ; 
and why, when it was finally incorporated in the 
dominion of Florence, that jealous Republic should 
have swerved from her traditional policy of harsh- 
ness towards subject towns, and granted Barga so 
many exceptional privileges. 

But a sketch of Barga's vicissitudes must be given 



36 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

later, for now the great door of the cathedral Is open, 
and the afternoon sun Is sending shafts of golden 
light up to the high altar. This chiesa viaggiore — 
commonly styled the Duomo — Is a massive, Imposing 
structure of considerable architectural pretensions, 
and has exercised the Ingenuity of all the archaeolo- 
gists who have visited It. It Is to the kindness of 
two of these gentlemen, Dr. Carina and Mr. Charles 
Heath Wilson, that I am Indebted for many of the 
following particulars. 

Of the orlo^In of the church nothlnof certain can be 
ascertained, save that up to the year 1390 It was 
much smaller than It Is now, and was dedicated to 
St. James and St. Christopher. It Is said to have 
been built upon the remains of a Pagan temple, but 
neither upon this head can any exact Information be 
obtained. 

To the older portion of the church. Including the 
facade, Mr. Wilson assigns the date of the eleventh 
century. This is very Interesting in character. It 
is built of Irregular blocks of rich yellow travertine. 



BARGA. 2,7 

much wasted by time, and has seven arcades of 
engaged columns on shafts. The architrave of the 
main entrance is of marble, and carved with rudely- 
executed scrolls of the Roman acanthus. Here and 
there a block of grey stone with sculptured knots 
and Interlacings excites a belief that at some period 
the whole facade may have been similarly decorated. 
This, however, is an open question. Some archseo- 
loofists detect distinct traces of Lombard workman- 
ship, and a curious carved Inscription beside the 
great door is adduced In support of this theory, 
supposed to be the trade mark, as It were, of those 
wandering Lombard artificers who were likewise of 
the Confraternity of Free Masons. 

Thus much of the Church of St. James and St. 
Christopher in the days when Sta. Maria of Loppia, 
down in the valley there, near the outlying strong- 
hold of Loppia, was the head church of the diocese, 
with all the benefices and dignities thereunto 
appertaining. 

But a great change came about In 1390. Some 



38 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

years before that date, during a campaign In which 
the castle of Loppla was destroyed by the Lucchese, 
its church desecrated, Its priest carried off In chains, 
and the whole district laid waste, a font had been 
erected In the Barga Church, and the rite of baptism 
performed there instead of at Loppla. But St. 
Christopher was poor; funds were lacking for pomps 
and ceremonies like those of Loppla ; therefore In 
1390 Giovanni, Bishop of Lucca, and Francesco dl 
Barga, Archprlest of Sta. Maria di Loppla, duly 
signed a petition explaining the case, and praying 
that the Church of Barga might be endowed with 
the estates, emoluments, and appurtenances of the 
Pieve of Loppla ; be raised to the rank of a pieve 
or parish church and baptistry, and be henceforth 
dedicated to the Holy Virgin as well as to St. 
Christopher Martyr (poor St. James was quite put 
aside) ; might be placed In the charge of the 
Chapter of the said church and hospital of Loppla, 
and remain in the gift and jurisdiction of the See of 
Lucca. 



BANG A, 39 

We can imagine that, all commiseration for 
Loppia's sufferings notwithstanding, it must have 
been a proud day for the brave and pious Barghi- 
giani when their hill-top fane ceased to be one of 
the twelve churches subject to little Loppia down 
there in the valley. Doubtless they opened their 
purses willingly enough to pay for the enlargement 
and decorations befitting alike their church's new 
dignity, and the state of the many noble families 
who found it pleasanter to live behind strong walls 
than in the much harassed district on which those 
walls looked down. As we have seen, some archaeo- 
logists consider that the travertine fa9ade belonged 
to the original little church of St. Christopher, while 
others assert that it was only now, when the whole 
structure was enlarged, that it was faced with those 
yellowish slabs. Yet the sculptures on the corbelled 
and arcaded cornice of the facade argue in favour 
of the former hypothesis, for they are exceedingly 
primitive. On one corbel, for instance, we see a 
very pre-Raphaelite knight, probably St. George, 



40 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

armed with sword and buckler, and about to give 
the death-stroke to the appalHng dragon on the next 
corbel. Similarly placed is the archer, with a dis- 
proportionately large head, and the waggish-looking 
bird opposite awaiting the arrow shot. But on the 
left flank of the church are some small pointed 
arches, evidently of a later period. 

The interior of the church is very imposing, and 
presents fine chlaro-oscuro effects as we come in from 
the blaze of sunshine without. On one side the 
light pours in through narrow pointed windows, on 
the other fiohts its wav throug^h curtains of dark 
crimson silk. And violet gleams and roseate glow 
are met and pierced by the long beams of pure 
sunlight from the open door. There has been some 
special ceremony on the previous day, and the floor 
is still strewn with twigs of box and yellow ever- 
lastings which send up whiffs of pungent fragrance 
as our feet pass over them. And there is the quaint 
old pulpit of which Barga is so justly proud ; and in 
our haste to approach it, wx hardly notice that the 



BARGA. 41 

impressive range of pillars, coursed In black and 
white, are only painted to look like stone. This 
very interesting pulpit has many points of re- 
semblance with that of San MInlato at Florence. 
It Is of marble, and rests upon four shafts. One of 
these is supported by a grotesque crouching figure ; 
the second and third, fronting the main entrance, 
respectively by a lion crushing a dragon, and a lion 
trampling on a human figure who has one hand in 
the brute's jowl and with the other has plunged a 
dagger up to the hilt in his throat ; the fourth is 
longer, and has no pedestal. The capitals of these 
shafts are all very elegant, and each is of different 
design. On one we see a very realistic eagle 
scratching its beak with its left claw, with an air of 
deep reflection. The rim of the pulpit is inlaid with 
a running ornament in highly-polished black paste. 
Beneath Is an arcade of small pointed arches much 
enriched. Their shafts have geometric patterns in 
the same black paste. The spaces between the 
arches have carvings of the Annunciation, Nativity, 



42 O.V TUSCAN BILLS. 

and Adoration of the Magi in low relief. These are 
all very naive and interesting, especially the three 
kings, who are briskly cantering towards the stable 
on exceedingly stumpy steeds. The figures, though 
coarse and clumsily executed, are full of life and 
movement. Their eyes are of black paste, round 
and projecting — like boot-buttons, as one of our 
party remarked. To the eye of the architect the 
interior of the church presents many interesting 
features ; as, for instance, the great difference in 
width of the tall arches in the choir. Indeed there 
is no unity of design, and there would seem to 
have been a rapid change of ideas during the 
process of enlarging the church. The masonry 
being all of the same character denotes that there 
was no orreat difference In ao^e. Some curious 
particulars respecting the church are to be found in 
the municipal records. 

There is a provision, for instance, dated 14 14, 
forbidding females to occupy places within the 
screen at the beginning of the transept while mass 



BARGA. 43 

was being performed, and ordaining that any one 
infringing this regulation should pay a fine of five 
soldi for every such offence. But the document 
naively adds, that of course this rule does not apply 
to the marriage service, during which It Is lawful 
for the bride to remain within the railing with her 
husband. Exception, too, was made in favour of 
the female members of the Salvi and Manfredl 
families, and, It Is stated, this privilege was granted 
In reward for Important services rendered by those 
families In unravelling a plot against the liberties of 
Barga. This document opens with expressions of 
homage to God and all the saints of Paradise, 
laudatory mention of Pope John XXI 1 1., and of 
the whole College of Cardinals. To the emperor 
no reference whatever is made. Praise Is also 
rendered to the Priori delle ArtI, the Gonfalonleri 
of justice, and to the magnificent and mighty people 
of the Commonwealth of Florence. There is a 
solemn declaration of faith In the Catholic Church, 
and In favour of the Guelph party. The honour, 



44 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

State, and greatness of the territory and commune of 
Barga are likewise magnified. And at the con- 
clusion Is a prayer for the '' Mala morte and final 
extermination of all the Ghibelllnes." 

The gate or screen which no female might pass 
Is, as we have stated, at the upper end of the nave ; 
it is raised on three steps, and abuts on the pulpit. 
It Is of Inlaid marble, and has some geometric and 
foliated designs of great beauty and variety. The 
font In the baptismal chapel, near the main 
entrance, is also worthy of remark. It is a huge 
marble basin of hexagonal form. In the large 
chapel to the right of the high altar Is a graceful 
edicola — or receptacle for the holy oils — of Delia 
Robbia ware, and attributed to Luca himself But 
this, like the other terre cotte In Barga, Is assigned 
by competent art critics to Andrea and his school, 
for, whereas no evidence exists of Luca ever having 
worked for Barga, Andrea Is said to have resided 
there for some years. And, as we shall presently see, 
the pieces differ in several essential particulars from 



BARGA, 45 

Lucas known style of workmanship. This edicola, 
or clborium, is shaped like a tiny altar let Into the 
wall. Beneath an architrave is a lifted curtain, 
sustained by two angels. On the summit of the 
circular frontispiece Is the sacramental cup, on 
which the infant Saviour stands in the act of 
benediction. On either side of the tabernacle is an 
angel clothed in a long tunic bearing a candelabrum, 
of which the base alone remains. These little 
figures are very suave and graceful. In a large 
niche in the choir stands a grotesque wooden image 
of Barga's patron saint, St. Christopher. This is of 
colossal size and ridiculously ill-proportioned form. 
The story goes that it had originally legs of a 
length suited to its body, but that being too tall for 
its destined receptacle, had to be cut down to fit in. 
It is of the rudest early Lombard workmanship, and 
its curiously florid colouring has been periodically 
renewed. There are several objects of interest in 
the sacristy. Among them a fine processional 
silver crucifix with four saints at the angles. It is 



46 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

dated 1408, and Is in some sense a reminiscence 
of the Orcagna style. There is also a very good 
chalice of the fourteenth century, richly chiselled 
and enamelled, and a store of splendid vestments of 
various periods. 

And now the sacristan, telling us that we have 
seen all that the church contains, unlocks a little 
door at the extremity of the transept, and we find 
ourselves In a rude cloister opening on to an 
Irregular bit of greensward : a sort of God's acre, 
though the corpses do not lie burled out there In 
the sun beneath the short, crisp turf, but are hidden 
away in some darksome pit under the stones of the 
cloister. It Is only of late years that open ceme- 
teries have been made, away from human dwellings. 
Before, In all these Italian towns, the dead were 
hurried out of sight into vaults beneath the parish 
church. From the low wall of this enclosure there 
is an enchanting view over sunny slopes, cloud- 
tipped peaks, and the red roofs of Barga bending 
towards the ravine-scored valley below. 



BARGA. 47 

Half an hour later we are down among Barga's 
narrow ways, In a little convent church of the Cla- 
rlsse. For here is to be seen one of the chief 
artistic glories of the town : a magnificent Ascen- 
sion of the Virgin, of Delia Robbia work. It is 
locally attributed to Luca, but, like all these Barga 
pieces, art critics assign It to Andrea. For Luca, 
as we know, generally confined himself to pale blue 
and white, using other tints solely for those won- 
drous fruit garlands of which Venice still shows us 
the living counterparts, pendent from church doors 
during the great feast of the Redentore. Yet, 
save in the matter of colour, this Ascension is 
almost w^orthy of the founder of the school. The 
rapt expression of the St. Francis Is wonderfully 
given. Indeed the group of saints surrounding the 
empty sepulchre Is far finer than that of the Virgin 
and angels above. Exquisite lilies are sprouting 
from the tomb, and within the frame of flowers and 
fruit is a ring of seraphim, with much variety of 
expression In their rounded baby features. At the 



48 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

base Is a narrow dado of numerous tiny half-length 
figures of saints, of very delicate workmanship. 
Unfortunately these are almost hidden by the usual 
decorations, but It Is some slight comfort to note 
that the nuns are free from one, at least, of the 
besetting sins of tawdriness. Real flowers bloom In 
the altar vases Instead of the ordinary caricatures In 
coloured paper. Over the great door Is another 
terra cotta : a graceful Vlro^In and Child enwreathed 
in a circle of fruit. 

Before plodding our way back the length of the 
town to examine the Delia Robbias In St. Francesco, 
we went on to the church of the Fornacetta, said to 
occupy the site of the Delia Robbias' furnace. To 
reach It we had to pass, what may literally be called 
Barga's back gate, leading to the mountain mule 
paths and the picturesque Giardino suburb. And 
issuing from this gate we find ourselves at the edge 
of a precipice. Barga's walls tower high behind us, 
and we look down into a deep ravine, once a most 
effectual moat, but now spanned by a narrow cause- 



BARGA. 49 

way. To the right a shrunken stream gleams here 
and there among the stones at the bottom ; and figs, 
and vines, and creeping plants of many shades drape 
the steep rocks beneath the walls, and fall into a 
tangle of greenery and flowers below. High in air 
and ivy-hung, a fine aqueduct strides boldiy over 
the gorge, and we look across to the woods and 
gardens of the huge Angeli Villa. Beyond the 
causeway we pass between neat little houses to the 
Fornacetta church, which is still hung about with 
the withered festoons of some recent holy festival. 
There is nothing to be seen within ; all is common 
and tawdry ; the pictures execrable. But that fiTie 
view of Barga's strongest side would have well 
repaid us for a more toilsome climb. 

Returning to the town, one threads a network of 
narrow streets, with narrower cross alleys, like s-teep 
cascades of dingy stones, dropping down Into them 
at intervals ; of darksome corners and darker arch- 
ways that might be dens of assassins, but are only 
nests of dirt. Then on through a queer triangular 

5 



so ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

piazza, with a few fine old mansions of massive 
stone, and past the Munlclpio (to which we shall 
presently return), and out at the chief gate by the 
Pallone ground — where the game goes briskly now 
— on our way to San Francesco ; for this subur- 
ban building is rich In Delia Robblas. It Is the 
church of the now suppressed Capuchin monastery, 
founded about the middle of the fifteenth century by 
Fra Beato Ercolano dl Barga, a preaching friar, 
whose fervid eloquence roused the enthusiasm and 
opened the purses of his numerous hearers. It is 
situated about a quarter of a mile from the gate, 
down a steep lane, among fields and vineyards, 
and mossy walls. The narrow, ill-lighted church 
contains three large altar-pieces, all probably by 
Andrea, though the Barghigiani energetically 
attribute one of them to Luca della Robbia ; 
and whoever its author, this Nativity Is a very 
noble composition. St. Jerome and St. Francis 
are kneeling before the Babe ; the loveliest angels 
are hovering In the air, and one of them has a 



BARGA. 51 

scroll Inscribed with musical notes. The Virgin 
and Child are tenderly beautiful. Heads of animals 
In lowest relief come In effectively behind the 
central group. On the dado is a small Pleta, a 
St. John, and four other saints. The whole is 
surrounded by a finely-moulded wreath of smiling 
cherubim. 

The piece over the altar opposite Is equal In 
size, but very Inferior In merit. Its subject is St. 
Francis receiving the stigmata. The saint's figure 
is good, his rapt fervour subtly expressed ; but the 
cold, pasty colouring of the whole work, Its clumsi- 
ness of design and execution, alike suggest Its being 
one of Andrea's earliest works or that of some pupil 
of the school. It has a coarse background of 
realistic cottages on the top of the hill, recalling the 
early German style. The blue, which is the pre- 
vailing colour, Is cold and heavy, totally unlike the 
tint used by Luca. In the centre of the dado Is a 
circular medallion of the Virgin and Child, with two 
angels in adoration, and four praying figures. The 



O.V TUSCAN HILLS. 



whole is bordered by angel heads, with stiff pendants 
of flowers and fruit. 

In the choir stands the third altar-piece, an As- 
sumption. The Virgin is floating up to heaven 
amid a cluster of attendant angels. She has 
dropped her girdle into the outstretched hands of 
St. John, who kneels to receive the gift. On the 
dado is a little door, that of the \^irgin's tomb, 
surrounded by cherubs and lightly-floating angels. 
This beautiful work has the usual frame of flowers 
and fruit, and is undoubtedly by Andrea della 
Robbia. So, probably, are the well-executed figures, 
four feet in height, of St. Anthony and St. Andrew 
at the entrance of the presbytery. Formerly the 
Mordini chapel, in the same building, contained two 
other figures — an angel of the Annunciation and 
the Virgin Mary — but these have been removed to 
the family palace, where we were presently shown 
them by Signor Mordini, ex- Prefect of Naples. 

In the cloister is a clumsy, unvarnished terra 
cotta, alleged to be an unfinished group by Andrea, 



BARGA. 53 

and quoted by the natives as a triumphant proof 
that all these works were produced in Barga itself. 
Before leaving the subject of the Delia Robbias, we 
may observe that among the records of Barga Is a 
memorandum that, in the year following the restora- 
tion and enlargement of S. Cristofano, the Delia 
Robbias were removed to that church from San 
Francesco, but there is no record of the date when 
they were replaced In the monastery. I'n fact there 
is a slnp^ular dearth of documents on all matters 
relating to works of art In the Duomo ; and the 
present syndic, who Is occupied Avith researches in 
the past history of Barga, has failed to discover any 
particulars concerning these magnificent terra cottas. 
The large collection of municipal archives Is as yet 
uncatalogued, and the older files and volumes have 
suffered considerably from damp. Among the latter 
are some contracts of the twelfth century. It also 
contains copies of many interesting historical docu- 
ments — negotiations with Florence, &c. — dated as 
early as the thirteenth century, and of which the 



54 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

originals may be found in the archives of Lucca 
and Florence. 

Barga went through so many and various vicissi- 
tudes, that its history reads like a novel — a novel 
without a hero, however ; for, though renowned en 
viasse for their fighting power and energy, the 
stalwart BarghigianI boast but few tovv^nsmen whose 
names were known to history. And of those few only 
the scantiest details are forthcoming, for their share 
of the world's work was done down In the plains, 
far from the high walls of their native stronghold. 

Simone di Barga, for instance, made his reputa- 
tion in Lucca about the middle of the fourteenth 
century. He was a celebrated doctor of the law, 
filled several important diplomatic posts, and com- 
piled the Statutes of 1372. Then, in 1527, we hear 
of a certain valiant captain, Galeotto da Barga, who 
was commandant of the fortress of Leghorn for the 
Republic of Florence, and held out for a con- 
siderable time against the Medici troops. In the 
days of the Renaissance, Barga contributed to the 



BARGA. 55 

ranks of the learned men In the person of Pietro 
Angeho, surnamed the Bargeo. He was a Latlnlst 
of some repute, owned the finest palace in Barga, 
and founded the still existing family of the Mar- 
quises Angell of Pisa. A tablet commemorating this 
worthy's acquirements Is to be seen on the wall of 
the municipal palace. Among lesser notabilities, 
we may mention that a native of Barga was the 
introducer of the silk trade into Bologna in 1341. 
This he must himself have learnt at Lucca, which 
was the first town in Italy where the art of silk 
spinning was carried on. 

No one can visit Barofa without desirinof to know 
something of its past days. Its remarkable strate- 
gical position, the strength of its walls, its picturesque 
lanes, its fine population, Its general air of present 
well-being, the testimony to past prosperity afforded 
by the masslveness of its principal mansions, and 
Its love of the fine arts, all combine to arouse the 
strongest wish to learn details of the events of 
which It was the scene. 



56 OX TUSCAX HILLS. 

Up to the present time no complete history of 
Barga has been written, though one has been con- 
templated by the learned Dr. Carina, whose memo- 
randa we have been privileged to read. The many 
political storms that have swept over the castello 
may probably be held accountable for the many 
gaps in the town records ; and it is necessary to 
ransack the archives of Lucca and Florence to 
obtain anything like a general view of Barga's past. 

All the world knows that at the beginning of the 
eleventh century almost the whole of Italy was 
subject to the German emperors, who ruled the 
different provinces by means of dukes, marquises, 
and counts, enjoying almost feudal supremacy over 
the chief cities and a greater or smaller extent of 
circumjacent territory. As to the rural districts, 
they were distributed among lesser nobles, known 
as valvassori, cattani, &c. It is equally well known 
that Tuscany, In virtue of its extent and position, 
ranked among the more important imperial pro- 
vinces, styled marches and duchies, and that its 



BARGA, 57 

lords, sometimes dukes, sometimes marquises, ruled 
over the principal cities, but had their chief residence 
in Lucca, the capital of the entire province.' 

Even In those misty times, as may be gleaned 
from the scanty notices scattered over the pages of 
old chroniclers, the men of Barga were distinguished 
for their valour, and in the following century obtained 
a special diploma, or patent, from Frederic Barba- 
rossa, guaranteeing them his Imperial protection, 
and declaring their absolute independence of every 
other authority. This document, after lauding 
the constant fidelity of the inhabitants, proceeds to 
assure them that the imperial nuncios In Garfag- 
nana will guarantee to them the maintenance of all 
rights and privileges enjoyed by their forefathers 
from the days of the Countess Matilda. Later, 
the Statutes of Garfagnana In 1287, and those of 



^ In a treaty of peace, concluded at Lucca, between Bishop Andrea 
of Luni and the Marquises Malaspina, in the year 1124, mention is 
made of that city in the following terms : " Gloriosa civitas Lucca, 
multis dignitatibus decorata, atque super universam Tuscii Marchiam 
caput ab exordio constituta," &c. (Aluratori). 



58 av TUSCAN HILLS, 

Lucca, 1308, promulgated after that Republic had 
assumed supremacy over the whole contado^ secured 
many special favours to Barga. 

And throughout the turmoil of the Middle Ages, 
we find this little castello (as the smaller walled 
towns were called) preserving a certain measure of 
independence, and though frequently brought into 
subjection to the despots of Lucca, as frequently 
shaking off the yoke, and, after various vicissitudes, 
finally swearing allegiance to the Commonwealth of 
Florence. To her, indeed, it was rather an ally than 
a subordinate, and retained numerous rights that were 
seldom allowed by the jealousy of the Florentines. 

But in all transactions with Barga account had 
to be taken of the tenacity with which the Bar- 
ghigiani clung to their old right of self-government. 
Barbarossa's famous diploma was addressed to the 
consuls and people of Barga ; which proves that, 
from the days of the Countess Matilda, a consular 
magistracy of popular origin already existed there, 
alike independent of the powerful Garfagnana 



BARGA. 59 

baronage and of the Commune of Lucca. There 
was also another reason why Florence sheathed her 
claws In velvet in dealing with these sturdy moun- 
taineers. In all previous conflicts and dissensions 
between Lucca and Pisa, Barga had Invariably sided 
with the latter city, for whenever the former was 
free of war alarms from Pisa, It always made fresh 
attempts to extend Its territory In the direction of 
the Garfagnana. It was therefore of the highest 
Importance to Florence to know that no aid should 
come to Pisa from that nest of fighting men up the 
valley of the Serchlo. 

The BarghlglanI never seem to have been an 
aggressive people, and reserved their valour for the 
defence of their rights and the maintenance of their 
boundaries. Their bitter hatred of the Lucchese, 
their often-recurring struggles against them, were 
always on this question of frontier. When Lucca 
wanted an excuse to attack Barga, It was her 
custom to stir up neighbouring districts to boundary 
quarrels with the place. It was on one such 



6o ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

occasion that, as far back as 1298, the Potesta of 
Lucca, one GonzeHno, marched on Barga with 
2,700 men, besieged it, carried it by storm, and 
demoHshed both its walls and its citadel. 

But the town seems to have recovered its pristine 
strength with considerable rapidity, since — as w^e 
have seen in writing of the cathedral — In less than 
half a century Barga had become a place of refuge 
for the whole country round ; its church became 
virtually the cJiiesa maggiore In consequence of the 
desecration of the Loppia fane and destruction 
of the village and outlying fortresses by the un- 
relenting Lucchese. 

In fact, from the middle of the thirteenth to the 
second half of the fourteenth century, Barga was 
almost continually engaged in efforts to shake off 
the yoke of Lucca. The longest interval of tran- 
quillity was during the latter years of Castruccio's 
reign, when that sagacious tyrant saw fit to pursue 
a policy of reconciliation. His death, in 1328, was 
the signal for a fresh revolt of the Barghlglani, who 



BARGA. 6i 

Opened secret negotiations with Florence. But the 
plot was betrayed, and Lucca instantly sent a con- 
siderable force to reduce the town to obedience. 
Florence, on her side, hastily despatched Amerigo 
Donati at the head of 400 men, but the succour w^as 
ineffectual ; other Florentine expeditions also failed, 
and the men of Barga had to rely on themselves 
alone. For a time they were subdued, but in 1331, 
by means of one of the Rolandlnghi (the dominant 
family in the district) and another noble, they again 
threw off their allegiance to Lucca. Coppo di 
Medici came from Florence to take possession of 
the town, and on his departure left a small force 
behind to prevent it from being carried as before by 
some sudden cotip de mai7i of the Lucchese. But 
Lucca was on the alert to regain the coveted terri- 
tory, and the following year besieged the town In 
junction with the troops of King John of Bohemia. 
The Florentines, although aided by Spinetto Mala- 
splna, failed to relieve the place ; Barga was again 
compelled to come to terms and open her gates to 



62 OA' TUSCAN HILLS. 

the attacking army. The chroniclers are silent as 
to the duration of this siege, but there is reason 
to suppose that it lasted about six weeks. The 
citizens' lives were spared, but the four principal 
personages in the town were made to take the oath 
of obedience barefoot and with every display of 
abject repentance. Then followed nine years of 
silent discontent on the part of Barga, of noisy 
oppression on that of Lucca ; but at the end of that 
period the then Lords of Lucca, the Scaligeri, ceded 
that city and its whole territory, inclusive of Barga, 
to the Florentines for the sum of 250,000 florins. 
Florence proved unable to hold Lucca, and presently 
yielded it to the besieging Pisans ; but when peace 
was concluded, October 9, 1342, Barga remained in 
the possession of Florence. 

Now for ten years the little town flourished In 
the enjoyment of the privileges granted her by 
Florence, while her old oppressor, Lucca, was 
groaning In servitude to Pisa. But In 1352, Fran- 
cesco Castracane, who had already taken possession 



BARGA. 63 

of the neighbouring town of Coreglla, gathered 
toofether a larofe band of armed men, marched on 
Barga, and kept up the siege for four months, until 
driven away by a formidable troop of mercenaries in 
the pay of Florence. This danger averted, Barga 
hoped to return to her former tranquillity, especially 
as, hitherto, Pisa had shown no disposition to 
molest her, notwithstanding the renewal of the war 
with Florence. 

Unfortunately the PIsans were aware how easy It 
would be to strike a blow at their enemy through 
Barga, and accordingly one night they suddenly 
appeared before the gate with a force of 4,000 foot 
and 1,000 horse. Their first assault was unsuc- 
cessful, for the women of Barga flocked to the walls 
and gallantly aided the male folk in repelling the 
enemy. Upon this the PIsans formally Invested the 
town. Plero FornesI, general of the Florentine 
army, hastened to its relief, and though his first on- 
slaught was repulsed, he finally succeeded In raising 
the siege, and taking many PIsans prisoners. 



64 ON TUSCAX HILLS. 

The year was not at an end before Pisa aQ^aln 
attacked Barga, whose designation might well be 
that of " Barga the besieged." This time the 
attempt was made with the aid of a contingent of 
English mercenaries. The town was just then gar- 
risoned by a body of 150 men, under the command 
of Benghi di Teghia Buondelmontl. The citizens 
fought with their accustomed valour, and made a 
successful sally, in which they utterly routed the 
enemy, and seized all the baggage and munitions of 
war. Many prisoners were taken, and some 150 
Pisans and English left dead upon the field. In 
reward for this dashing victory, Florence confirmed 
Benghi in his post of Captain of Barga for another 
eighteen months — a most unusual term of authority 
for a Florentine official. 

Now came a long period of repose, in which Barga 
had apparently no history ; had leisure to listen to 
Fra Ercolano's burning exhortations, to watch the 
building of his convent church and discuss the merits 
of the terra cotta pictures destined for its shrines^ 



BARGA, 65 

With the opening of the fifteenth century, however, 
the old troubles returned. In 1401 party strife ran 
high in Garfagnana between Guelph and Ghibelline ; 
some members of the latter faction hatched a con- 
spiracy to wrest Barga from the Florentines and 
throw it into the hands of their own party. But the 
plot was discovered — probably by means of the 
Manfredi and Salvi, whose ladies, as we have seen, 
were privileged to sit within the chancel of the 
Duomo — and the Captain-General did speedy justice 
on the conspirators. 

Not yet had Barga seen the last of besieging 
armies, for in 1437 the renowned Condottiere Picci- 
nino marched on the town with a formidable force. 
He expected to obtain an easy victory, but the 
inhabitants received speedy succour from Florence. 
A pitched battle took place beneath the walls on the 
8th of February, 1437, and not only was the great 
leader compelled to raise the siege, but his army was 
ignominiously routed and put to flight with heavy 
losses of men and material. 

6 



66 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

Again, a century later, in 1554, Barga was In 
great peril from open attack and underhand Intrigue. 
Plero StrozzI marched from Siena to the Serchio 
valley in order to effect a junction with the French 
troops, under the Seigneur of Forquevaulx, who 
were coming from Lombardy to his assistance. He 
halted at Ponte a Morlano, and decided to attempt 
the seizure of Barga In concert with the French, who 
were already near at hand. 

We learn from the historian Ammlrato, that the 
Florentines and their Duke Coslmo had entire con- 
fidence In the men of Barga, knowing them to be 
'' accustomed to warfare and exceedingly courageous 
and trustworthy. BtU that this ivas not enough, see- 
ing that the zvalls were old and weaky and that like- 
wise there were certain fuorisciti who would have 
dearly liked to see their native place won over to the 
French side!' Wherefore the Ducal Commissioner, 
Vincenzo RIdolfi, demanded aid of Fivizzano (an- 
other strong place in Garfagnana, some miles beyond 
Barga), and at no small risk and peril it sent the 



BARGA. 67 

desired help. De Forguevaulx did his best to 
seduce the Barghlgiani by depicting in glowing 
colours the splendid privileges and advantages that 
would accrue to them on their joining the French 
cause. But the valiant mountaineers were Incorrup- 
tible. They replied that they enjoyed great liberty 
under the gentle sway of Florence; they jeered at 
the proffered favours, and stated their resolve to 
defend their walls to the last extremity. Upon this 
the French general, having no leisure for a hazardous 
siege, thought It wiser to abandon the enterprise, 
and went on his way to join Strozzi's army. After- 
wards, w^hen the Medici dynasty was firmly estab- 
lished, the Barghlgiani were relieved of all fear of 
losing their liberty. Their energy was turned into 
peaceful channels ; trade and Industry flourished ; 
their population overflowed the walls and spread 
over the hill-sides. Now and again quarrels would 
burst out with their old foes of Lucca concernino^ 
some question of frontier or rights of pasturage ; but 
these were passing shadows in no way affecting the 
prosperity of the little town. 



68 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

Indeed, owing to Its Immunity from octroi duty 
and from various taxes levied on Its less fortunate 
neighbours, up to the year 1859, when, with the rest 
of Tuscany, It became part of the Italian kingdom, 
Barga drove a thriving trade In smuggling, and 
not a few of Its Inhabitants bitterly regret what, to 
them, were the good old times. But even in these 
days of excessive taxation, Barga is still in better 
case than the majority of communities off the beaten 
track. Several silk mills and silk and felt manufac- 
tories prosper there. Numerous flocks and herds 
are reared on its rich pastures, and wool and cheese 
are among Its prominent sources of revenue. The 
Barga hemp, grown In the lowlands by the Serchio, 
is famed for Its excellence, while the vineyards to 
the south of the town produce a sound wine of more 
than average quality. 

As for the air, it is so pure and elastic that did 
the town offer the commonest Inducements to travel- 
lers in the shape of habitable inns, decent food, and 
means of conveyance, It might prove a formidable 



BARGA. 69 

rival to the hackneyed Baths of Lucca. For the 
narrow valley of the Lima, with its oppressive, 
relaxing climate, generally either too hot or too 
damp in the summer months, during which it is most 
frequented, owes the majority of its visitors to the 
fact of being the only country retreat within easy 
reach of Florence, where creature comforts and good 
hotels may be found. Barga is invariably several 
degrees cooler than the Bagni, and is free from the 
heavy dews that make the latter so trying to many 
constitutions. Where, too, in the valley are there 
extended mountain views like those commanded 
from every side of Barga ? And scattered over the 
surrounding hills are hamlets, convents, and ruins. 
All of artistic and historic interest, and all still 
unbroken ground to the tourist world. 



III. 

THE A BE TONE 



II 




^be Hbetone. 



% 




ITUATED In the heart of the Tuscan 
Apennines, about twenty miles from the 
Pracchia station, forty from Florence, 
J and at 4,600 feet above the sea, the 
Abetone, or Bosco Lungo, is the coolest of Italian 
summer resorts. Its woods seem the threshold of 
a great Alpine forest, but practically are a mere 
oasis of firs and beeches in the hollows and on the 
flank of a sun-baked mountain range. From their 
every edge and opening the outlook Is always to 
grey or sun-coloured peaks with streaks of scarped 



74 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

limestone and occasional patches of verdure. These 
Tuscan highlands have a meagre nature from sheer 
excess of sun. Waterless torrent-beds and cascades 
shrunk to a thread are tantalizing suggestions of 
freshness amid the general drought. The Abetone 
is often called the Italian Switzerland, but although 
a welcome surprise in this land of summer glare, it 
does not merit so lofty a title. A Switzerland with- 
out glaciers or snowfields, and with scarcely a peak 
over 6,000 feet high ! 

About two miles below the Abetone you come to 
the edge of the chestnut zone, through wdiich you 
have journeyed all the w^ay from Pracchia. Then 
beeches begin, soon followed by larches and sapling 
firs. You pass a ruddy moorside, reminding you of 
Scotland. It is carpeted with heather and bilberry, 
and as you climb its crest to peep down on the fan- 
tastic crags of the Sestaione valley, your feet are 
caught in tangles of giant stag moss. And now the 
woods begin in earnest on either side of the road ; 
there is a cluster of cottac^es and a little inn where 



THE ABETONE. 75 



torrents trickle down to the Lima and tall blue gen- 
tians grow ; there are plantations, pastures, and an 
avenue of enormous mountain ashes ; more mean 
stone houses — Ill-described by the cosy word cot- 
tage — a tiny church, and the dingy hotel that was 
once a grand ducal custom and post-house. 

Most uninviting summer quarters this Grand 
Hotel de I'Abetone, with Its damp dining-room 
and gaunt, unscoured chambers ; but three steps 
take you Into the encircling forest, where space and 
purity and quiet are yours to command. 

These Abetone woods are very dark and solemn, 
for they are not carefully thinned, and are almost 
entirely composed of silver firs. The older trees 
are tufted and fringed with lichen and Spanish 
moss, and their foliage is of a soft velvety green, 
with cones growing upright at the top. The rich 
colouring of the red-trunked firs of Tirol Is lacking 
here, and would greatly add to the charm of these 
dense forest ways. 

Nevertheless their dark shade is grateful when 



76 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

the July sun Is high, and every now and then the 
serried trunks open out Into dehghtful glades, recal- 
ling Keats' — 

"Mid forest brake, 
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk rose-blooms." 

In these laburnum droops Its golden clusters, and 
there are tangles of -sw^etbrlar, smooth-leaved rose- 
bushes with small crimson flowers, trails of rasp- 
berries and brambles. Here and there too In 
darker dingles, and wherever there are boggy spots 
among the bilberry banks, and a little water still In 
the torrent-beds, grow , patches of forget-me-nots, 
and tall spikes of aconite and other wlcked-look- 
Ing, poisonous things. Colts' foot and mares' tails 
too abound, but these degenerate descendants of 
primeval vegetation seem out of place everywhere 
now-a-days, excepting in savage ravines cleft by 
glacier streams. Then there Is a delightful bullock 
track winding through the recesses of the forest to 
the lower crags of the LIbro Aperto — the double 
peak on which winter snows rest In the semblance 



THE ABETONE. 77 



of the pages of a half-opened book. From this 
track one can. branch off into hidden glades where 
the secret of the woods is revealed to the solitary 
wanderer.- '' The incommunicable trees begin to 
persuade us- to live with them, and quit our life of 
solemn trifles. ' 

Looking' out from the dense shade of the firs, the 
strong summer sunlight transforms the bushes on 
the crest of steep banks into screens of gleaming 
emeralds. On all sides is a fascinating dance of 
light and shade ; now of pure white sunshine, and 
then, towards evening, showers of gold fall on the 
lichened trunks. The air is full of bird-voices, and 
their songs are accompanied by the hum and buzz 
of innumerable, unseen insects. But there come 
moments of utter stillness, when all nature seems 
hushed to sleep. Then suddenly the spell is 
broken ; birds and insects awake ; there are mys- 
terious cracklings and rustlings all about you ; the 
woodpeckers tap more noisily than before ; a brown 
or black squirrel darts up a tree close beside you 



78 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

and frisks from branch to branch ; a family of tom- 
tits flutters down in short, playful flights, and you 
fancy the mother bird Is peeping from the nest over- 
head to superintend the children's sports. Suddenl)^, 
at touch of wind or wing, a shower of fir needles 
rains down, and the timid tomtits disappear. But 
with human companions you miss all these domestic 
scenes of fonest life. Then you only hear distant 
birds, and on hot days the incessant sawing of 
ckale. Cicale at 4,600 feet above the sea ! 

You hoped to have left their " iioioso inetro " behind 
In the plains. CarduccI Is the only Italian poet who 
has a good word for these noisy rejolcers In mid- 
summer heat. He says they are '' pazze di sole',' and 
their chorus a hymn of joy, In which the eternal youth 
of mother earth celebrates her nuptials with the sun. 
And he quotes the pretty Greek fancy that men who 
had given their lives to the Muses were turned into 
brown cicale after death. 

Sometimes through crossing branches you have 
a glimpse of the fawn-coloured crest of the LIbro 



THE ABE TONE. 79 



Aperto, or the hump of its comrade, the CImone. 
Or, again, you are unexpectedly at the edge of the 
woods, and look out on sun-bathed meadows and 
their carnival rout of flowers and grasses. Ox- 
eyed daisies, rue, columbine, asphodel, thyme, 
orchises, scented and unscented, St. John's w^ort, 
several varieties of veronica, pinks — dark-crimson 
and palest rose — dwarf, bright blue gentian and 
purplish field gentian, bugloss and scabious, hare- 
bells and phittyuma, and a groundwork of yellow 
blossoms, lady's rattle, lotus, potentilla, ranunculus. 
And these are only a few items of the mountain flora. 

Then there is more than one uncanny dell low 
down in the valley, where great moss-grown boulders 
He cushioned on bilberries. Rocks that are often so 
grotesque in form, that you scan the spreading fir 
branches overhead, as If in search of the famous old 
w^Itch who was in the habit of turning princes and 
their faithful animals Into stone. 

But the sweetest spot In the whole forest is a tiny 
glade on the flank of the LIbro Aperto. It is a 



8o ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

round space of turf among the pines, crossed by a 
crystal-clear rivulet. On its shallow bank, and In 
the shade of a yew tree, stands a huge fir stump, 
crowned by a spreading fern. Surely some maiden 
of Queen TItania's court must have dropped the 
fern- seed into that hollow trunk! Nature is seldom 
so purposely decorative. And Indeed this dainty 
glade seems marked out for fairy trysts or revels. 

The Abetone is really grand on moonlit nights. 
Even the mean little church gains dignity as it 
stands out clear and white ao^alnst the firs at the turn 
of the road, and the pastures hedged in by the solemn 
forest are a rare and lovely sight. The silver firs 
wear a very spectral aspect ; you may trace ghastly 
figures with outstretched arms In every moon-struck 
stem. The tall larches are feathered with silver, 
and once, when there was a misty moon, we saw a 
fir-top cut through its disk in such wise that the tree 
seemed to have a halo of dusky smoke rags, while 
its extreme tip was surrounded by soft, white light. 

One still July night, coming down the road from 



THE ABETONE. 8i 



the Pension Major, when no faintest breath of wnid 
was stirring, we were startled by a novel sound. It 
was the voice of the forest — Its night voice — a 
solemn, continuous murmur. For a moment we 
stood spellbound, then tried to understand what It 
might be. Not the hum of bees, for they sleep by 
night ; It was too indistinct to be a chorus of frogs, 
neither could It be a murmur of the distant Lima, 
which was too dwindled to have a voice that could 
reach so far. We were content to leave It unex- 
plained. It was a wonderful and mysterious sound, 
sinking and swelling with a slight metallic ring. The 
fascination of It grew fairly uncanny. It might have 
heralded the march of some spectral host through 
the moonlit glades below. 

Nor were human Interests lacking at the Abetone. 
The villagers are simple, kindly people, always ready 
to chat with the strangers, and the women are 
picturesque on festive days, with bright yellow silk 
kerchiefs on their handsome heads. One day the 
Improvisatrlce Beatrice came to the hotel to sit 

7 



82 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

for her portrait to one of the visitors. This won- 
derful old woman Is famed throughout Tuscany for 
her gift of improvising verses In different metres 
on all sorts of subjects. She Is an untaught, hard- 
working peasant of the Sestaione valley, and must 
have been strikingly beautiful In her youth. She 
was seventy when we saw her, but still handsome 
and lively, and her withered face lost its age when 
she began to sing and recite. Her tall, robust figure 
was little bent by the weight of years. She had 
walked all the way from her home — five miles of 
steady ascent — and was going to walk T^ack In the 
evening. Her pretty old eyes, mild and sunken In 
repose, flashed and sparkled when she spoke. Her 
skin was a network of minute wrinkles, her shapely 
head was bound by a kerchief folded like those of 
Michelangelo's Fates. She had a resolute, well- 
cut nose, and her toothless mouth had harmonious 
curves. She gave us several improvisations of facile 
verse, mainly composed of popular sayfngs and 
axioms strung together haphazard. Some-she sang 



THE ABETONE. 83 



in a curious minor chaunt, some she recited. Her 
voice '' no longer served " her, she said, with a gentle 
sigh. But though quavering, it was still tuneful. 
Her manners were delightful. She had the pretty 
confidence of a petted child, and told us how some 
of her verses had been printed, and how many great 
people had been to see her. She added that only 
the winter before she had received no less than eight 
invitations to Florence, but had refused them all on 
account of the illness and death of a dear little 
grandchild. In fact, Professor Tigri, the great 
authority on Tuscan popular songs, knows La Bea- 
trice well, and gives an interesting account of her in 
one of his works. Professor Giuliani has also writ- 
ten of her, and noted the Dantesque phraseology in 
use among the mountaineers of the Pistoian Apen- 
nines, especially in the district where Beatrice lives. 
And although unlettered, this gifted woman has 
picked up some literary knowledge, for, in begin- 
ning one of her recitations, she said : " Now I will 
give you some Bernesque verses." I inquired if 



84 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

none of her six children had inherited her powers, 
and she repHed that her youngest boy sang well, 
and had *'a good brain." Her heart is as good as 
her wit, and she has never had her head turned 
by the notice and flattery lavished upon her. She 
has been an exemplary wife and mother ; and al- 
though her fame has had no golden fruits beyond 
passing gifts, she proves her heaven-born nobility 
by generous helpfulness to her poorer neighbours. 
Long may she live with her children and grand- 
children among the chestnut woods of the Ses- 
taione ! 

Another day we had the spectacle of an al fresco 
court of justice at Dr. Major's Pension. This pen- 
sion, once a frontier custom-house, of the Duchy of 
Modena, is a quarter of a mile beyond the Abetone 
hotel, just where the road begins to dip down into 
the vale of Fiumalbo. It has a fine position, com- 
manding the verdant basin of fields and pastures 
encircled by clustered mountains capped by con- 
siderable peaks. The wide, sunny landscape is a 



THE ABE TONE. 85 



delightful surprise as you Issue from the shadowy 
woods, and every passing cloud changes the ethereal 
vesture of hill and dale. 

The firs and beeches sweep up the mountain 
behind the house, but cease abruptly at the edge of 
the valley by the sandhills, marking the confines of 
the former Tuscan dominions. When Dr. Major 
bought the old custom-house, he also bargained for 
an additional scrap of ground at the foot of the 
sandhills, adjoining the cottage of a blind peasant 
named Fortunato. But the latter disputed the 
Government's right to sell the bit of land, and alleged 
that it was his own freehold property. The authori- 
ties asked to see his title-deeds. He had lost them, 
so the poor old man was in danger of losing his 
home as well as his plot of ground. But shortly 
before the first hearing of the case, Fortunato dis- 
covered a fragment of the missing deed, showing 
the date, 1802, but with the names of notary and 
witnesses torn off. Happily his lawyer recognized 
the handwriting as that of the deceased notary of a 



86 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

neighbouring town. Search was made in the office 
of the said notary's successor, and an attested copy 
of the lost deed found. But this only confirmed 
Fortunato's title to the cottage, there being no men- 
tion of the scrap of ground. His right to this now 
hung on the length of time it had been in his father's 
possession. Eighty years' tenure is required to con- 
firm ownership ; so Fortunato, aided by a benevolent 
American lady interested in his case, had hunted up 
all the oldest inhabitants of the neighbourhood to 
depose in his favour. 

The tribunal sat in the road outside Dr. Major's 
dining-room windows, and opposite the contested bit 
of soil. Judge and notary were established at a 
toilet table, with an oil-cloth cover ; lawyers and 
witnesses occupied cross benches. Some tottering 
old men gave a good deal of inconclusive evidence. 
One of them remembered that Fortunato's father 
owned the bit of land sixty years back, but could 
not swear that It was enclosed as at present. He 
thought he had seen it sometimes with and some- 



THE ABETONE. 87 



times without a fence. The Crown lawyer wished 
to know if there were trees on the land. Fortunato's 
counsel wasn't sure, had never noticed, ran across 
the road to look and came back triumphantly report- 
ing that there was one cherry tree. 

The proceedings were diversified by much smoking 
and spitting, and enlivened by the howls of several 
small children hovering on the outskirts of this 
primitive court. And no verdict was arrived at, for 
the Crown lawyer having unluckily raised a question 
which the present judge was not competent to decide, 
the case was adjourned until the following month in 
the Court of Pieve di Pelago. 

There the matter was amicably arranged, and the 
blind man left in possession of his one cherry tree 
and patch of vegetables. 

For pedestrians of limited powers, Monte Maggiore, 
the foot-hill of the CImone and Libro Aperto range, 
is one of the finest points of view. It is a bold 
bluff overhanging the vale of Flumalbo. You 
approach it from the sandhills, through a copse of 



88 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

Starveling beeches — workhouse children of the 
neighbouring forest. Then crossing an open space 
of sand and rocks, a square green height lies straight 
ahead, crested to the right by a grove of mighty 
beech trees backed by pale, grey peaks. 

The view was specially grand one afternoon when 
a storm was brewing away to the south. To the 
left rose chain beyond chain of blue hill-tops, and 
dark, wooded slopes, bold green ridges, clustered 
grey summits, and the wild peaks of S. Pellegrino 
overhung by inky cloud masses. And down below. 
In the funnel-shaped gorge, lay the little grey town 
of Flumalbo, wedged in at the foot of greyer CImone. 
By the time we reached the beech grove on the top- 
most plateau, after a stiff climb over steep, slippery 
turf, the storm rack was drifting towards us. We 
were still In the sunshine, with blue sky overhead, 
but ominous vapours were floating over CImones 
crest and the twin peaks of the Libro Aperto were 
dark and grim against leaden clouds. From the 
edge of our bluff we looked down on the roofs of 



THE ABE TONE. 89 



Fiumalbo, and saw the plunge of the waterfall Into 
the milky torrent that gives its name to the town. 
We walked along to the narrow ridge connecting 
Monte Magglore with the Libro Aperto, and turning 
aside Into the forest, soon struck the fairy dell at the 
end of the bullock track. 

But the most romantic scenery within easy reach 
of the Abetone Is decidedly the Valley of Springs, 
at the foot of the Tre Potenze. The shortest route 
to It is by the mule track through the woods and over 
the ridge behind the Pension, but It is perhaps more 
impressive when approached by the old road to the 
Baths of Lucca. Turning off through some fields 
from the Fiumalbo road, you presently strike this 
abandoned highway. It was made In the days when 
Tuscany and Modena were upon bad terms — and 
Lucca, a separate state — to enable the Duchess of 
Modena to reach her favourite baths without passing 
through the territory of her unfriendly neighbour. 
It Is no longer practicable for carriages, and at some 
points barely so for pedestrians. But it affords views 



90 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

of varied loveliness as it winds up the cliffs at the 
base of the high wooded range closing in the fertile 
valley. You pass through a chaos of sunburnt rocks ; 
all is intensely southern. Then suddenly you come 
to a grove of larches and emerge from it into a cool 
and shady Alpine retreat, with rushing waters all 
about you. A grand torrent tears its way through 
a rocky ravine ; you tread on soft turf seamed by 
innumerable streamlets, and 'broidered with white 
Parnassus and blue forget-me-nots. The glen grows 
wilder at every step. Fine limestone bluffs and 
bristling crags rise above the woods. Mossy 
boulders lie scattered among the bilberry beds. 
You may forget you are in Italy, unless you glance 
back through the blue gate of the hills to the little 
southern town nestled beneath the crags of Cimone. 
A train of charcoal-laden mules, with grim and 
grimy drivers, comes jingling down a side path 
among the trees. From the bridge over the torrent 
by which the road turns off to the Foce di Giove 
you see the summit of the Tre Potenze at the head 



THE ABE TONE. 91 



of the glen. The Springs, or PozzI, are some dis- 
tance further on, at the foot of that fine mountain, 
where the vale ends In a broad ad de sac, A multi- 
tude of rivulets course through the grass, and two 
big torrents wind over stony beds, forming shallow 
ravines here and there among fallen boulders. There 
are running waters on all sides; the fir wood has 
come to end ; there are only clumps of beeches on 
islands of turf. Sheep-bells tinkle pleasantly on the 
steep slopes, below the upheaved limestone strata 
walling in this wild and solitary spot. 

It was impossible to le£;ve the Abetone without 
visiting Fiumalbo. Seen from the heights it was 
always the key-note of a symphony in grey. For it 
has grey roofs and lies in the grey gully, at the 
foot of grey CImone, the highest mountain of the 
Abetone group. You wind down to it by five miles 
of leafy road, skirting the Costa del Medino. 
From the high bridge — grey, of course — over the 
grey-stoned river bed, there are fine views of the 
Valley of Springs and other tempting glens. Lower 



92 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

down, by the town, a ruined castle crowns a project- 
ing crag and commands the defile towards Pieve di 
Pelago. At close quarters Fiumalbo is seen to be 
enlivened by many warmer tints. Its inhabitants 
are great lovers of flowers, and nearly every house 
has a loggia filled with blossoming plants, and garden 
scenes painted on the walls. The principal church 
has some ancient pillars with fine capitals cruelly 
defaced and blunted by whitewash, and on the 
columns of the peristyle two curious early bas- 
reliefs, with the emblems of the Knights Templars. 
The Sacristan proudly displayed his collection of 
banners and vestments, and seemed astonished at 
our preferring rich old brocades and faded em- 
broideries to modern silks of brilliant aniline dyes. 

Tiny, tortuous streets lead to the Piazza of 
Fiumalbo and its one great house with a wide 
terrace and double flight of steps. Near it Is the 
shop of the druggist and herbalist, who is the 
leading personage of the little town. Signor Coppi 
is the local antiquarian, is a man of substance, and 



THE ABETONE. 93 



devotes his leisure to the fabrication of plaster casts. 
Our concern with him was to obtain leave to visit 
the ruined castle on the crag of which he is the 
owner. Being disengaged, he obligingly accom- 
panied us, and led the way, by a steep lane of hovels 
swarming with dirty children, to steeper steps cut in 
the rock. 

It was a happy thought to convert the castle 
courtyard into a radiant flower-garden; but how 
could a man with a taste for art and archaeology 
build that hideous, bright pink house at the edge of 
the enclosure ! This eyesore is to be let \.o forestieri, 
and our admiration was claimed for its interior 
arrangements. The watch-tow^er at the other end 
overhanging the river is still habitable, and its 
crumbled battlements are replaced by a tiled roof. 
The ground floor is devoted to plaster casts. The 
first story is a pleasant little study lined w^ith books 
and dried plants, and the second shelters some in- 
different h'ic-a-h'ac, minerals, shells, and odds and 
ends of broken pottery. From the top we enjoyed 



94 



ON TUSCAN HILLS. 



novel views of the familiar mountains and turns of 
the valley. We looked straight up to the grey 
precipices of Mon CImone, and the blank bareness 
of its grim, pale face seemed less desolate on this 
side, whence It Is seen to be belted with pleasant 
woodlands, and gladdened by the flash of leaping 
cascades. 




' IV. 
THE PALIO OF SIENA 





Zbe palio of Siena. 

VEN In pleasure- loving Italy charac- 
teristic local festivals are rapidly dying 
out. But among the few still lingering 
on with more or less vitality, the Palio 
of Siena Is undoubtedly the brightest, most spirited, 
and that which best retains the stamp of antiquity. 

Every year, towards the middle of August, Siena 
shakes off her summer drowsiness, and awakes to 
a burst of cheerfulness and festivity. The leading 
families hurry back from mountain villas and seaside 
resorts to their grand old dusky palaces In town ; 

8 



98 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

the narrow shop-windows are decked with tempting 
wares ; country folk pour in from hill and valley ; the 
doors of the theatre re-open ; brass bands practise 
new pieces night and day ; and the inhabitants of 
the seventeen Contrade, into which Siena is divided, 
eagerly discuss the chances and merits of rival 
horses and jockeys. 

For the famous festival of the Palio is neither 
more nor less than a horse race, run in that storied 
Piazza del Campo, than which it were hard, any- 
where in the world, to find a spot less adapted for 
the purpose. For, as every one knows, this Piazza 
is in the cavity of the extinct crater upon which 
Siena is built. It is shell-shaped, and its slopes 
are paved with small, irregular stones. An English 
jockey, or indeed a horseman of any kind, would 
be aghast at the notion of riding any animal round 
such a course, over a scanty layer of sand ; yet it is 
here that in pursuance of time-honoured custom the 
Siena races are run. 

For many centuries all public games have been 



THE PALIO OF SIENA. 99 

held in this Piazza. First the Elmora Games — 
sham fights Hke those of the Greeks and Romans ; 
then the Georgian Games, dedicated to St. George, 
and in commemoration of the bloody victory of 
Monte Aperti. Later came the game of Pallone, 
when, in the presence of the captain of the people 
and the chief magistrates, the youth of Siena fought 
for the possession of a great ball hurled down 
among them from the summit of the Mangia tower. 
This was succeeded by Wrestling Matches, taking 
place in the winter season, and continued from the 
year 1291 down to the beginning of the present 
century. But the longest enduring public festivities 
are those contests between the Contrade of Siena, 
which have survived to our own day in the form of the 
Palio races. The Conti'ade are district associations 
of the seventeen sections of the city, each with its 
own laws and officials, its own treasury, and its own 
church. Seldom at peace, yet seldom at down- 
right feud with one another, their rivalry never leads 
to very serious results. Their origin is lost in that 



loo ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

of the Republic, and it is impossible to fix the 
precise date of their foundation. We know, how- 
ever, that as far back as 1160 the city was divided 
into Terzz, or thirds ; and that in 1328 there were 
fifty-nine Co7itrade, namely, twenty in the Terzo di 
Cittd, twenty in that of St. Martino., and nineteen 
in that of Camollia. Each Contrada had its captain, 
standard-bearer, and council of three, and all were 
subject to the authority of the captain of the people. 
In times of war the members of the Conb^ade took 
arms, and marched under their respective flags to 
the defence of the Republic. Every Contrada had 
some animal for its emblem, and was usually desig- 
nated by its name, though sometimes by that of its 
street or patron saint. This custom still prevails. 
The number of the Contrade rose and fell with the 
rise and fall of the population and the vicissitudes 
of the State. When the Republic fell under the yoke 
of the Medici, it was already reduced to twenty- 
three ; and when, at a tournament in the Piazza in 
1675, ^^ Cofitrade of the Strong Sword, Viper, 



THE PALIO OF SIENA. lor 

Bear, Lion, Cock, and Oak joined In insulting the 
judges, they were suppressed, and their districts 
divided among the seventeen others, which are still 
in existence. These are the Tortoise, Forest, Snail, 
Panther, Eagle, Wave, Sheep, Tower, Shell, Ow^l, 
Unicorn, Goose, Worm, Giraffe, Wolf, and Hedge- 

. hog- 
But the present Palio races are very mild sur- 
vivals of the bloody contests in which the Con- 
trade formerly struggled for victory. Towards the 
end of the fifteenth century, tourneys, jousts and 
sham battles, fought with blunt wooden swords, 
were all abandoned in favour of bull and buffalo 
fights, in which much blood was often shed. A 
century later, as manners became less barbarous, 
these were formally abolished and replaced by races 
of mounted buffaloes. But it was soon found that 
with eighteen or twenty of these savage animals 
rushing and hustling round the steep, narrow course, 
almost as many accidents occurred as in the former 
games. Accordingly, in 1650, the use of buffaloes 



I02 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

was forbidden by law, and horses were employed 
instead. The prize of victory was now a Palio, or 
banner of damask fringed with white and lined with 
black and white silk. At first the competing horses 
were never less than twenty ; later, they were 
reduced to seventeen; and then in 1719 it was 
decreed that ten only should run, and that the 
fantini (jockeys) should carry short whips, or 
nerbi, given to them at the moment of starting, 
instead of the long flexible thongs with which they 
were accustomed to drag one another from the 
saddle. These rules are still in force, and every 
year the ten racing Contrade are chosen by ballot 
from the seventeen. The Palio now takes place 
twice a year : early in July and in the middle of 
August, and the latter is always the chief and 
favourite spectacle. 

The race itself is on the 17th August, but on 
the three preceding evenings there are trial gallops, 
when the Piazza is nearly as crowded as on the 
great day. Regarded as races, these " events " are 



THE PALIO OF SIENA. 105 



of course the drollest caricatures. The horses 
entered are of every sort and age, and taken 
indiscriminately from plough, cart, or cab. The 
jockeys are big, powerful men whose aim is to stick 
firmly to their saddles, without attempting to spare 
their horses' backs by careful riding. They need to 
be rough customers, for every fantino does his best 
to unseat his nearest competitors, and, whenever 
he finds one gaining upon him, cuts him savagely 
over face and shoulders with his whip. 

The eve of the Palio is celebrated by fireworks 
and illuminations ; and Bengal lights and Chinese 
lanterns play magical tricks with the grand old 
buildings of the Piazza del Campo. 

The year that we were in Siena the race day 
dawned cloudless and brilliant, as all other days of 
the previous month, but later on heavy storm clouds 
gathered over the city and threatened disturbance 
to the festival. All Siena watched the sky, all 
Siena trembled. But the sun shone forth again, 
and before six o'clock p.m. all the world was on its 



io6 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

way to the Piazza. The streets were thronged with 
rustics clad in their best, and all the women wore 
gay bodices and huge, flapping straw hats adorned 
with bright, new ribbons and gaudy flowers. As In 
all parts of Italy where the mdtairie system prevails, 
they are a fine, well-fed, healthy-looking race. There 
were many beautiful faces to be seen among them, 
and nearly all were fresh and bright, honest-eyed 
and robust. The women of Siena do not compare 
well with their country cousins, for In their frantic 
efforts to ape fashions beyond their means, they are 
apt to load themselves with unbecoming, tawdry 
finery. Yellow feathers seemed to be In the highest 
favour. 

Mounting the steep stairs of the Archive Office 
at the top of the massive PIccolomlnl Palace, we 
already hear the confused, sea-like murmur of the 
waiting thousands in the Piazza below. Our first 
glance from the lofty balcony seems to show us a 
huge black and blue carpet streaked with pale 
yellow, and shot with flashes of brighter colour. 



THE PALIO OF SIENA. 107 

The next moment we see that this carpet has Hfe 
and movement ; the pale yellow streaks wave to and 
fro ; we are looking down upon a dense crowd of 
human beings, many of whom have flapping straw 
hats and multicoloured fans. The space between 
the course and the houses Is filled in with tiers of 
seats — a variegated outer border — beyond the circle 
of the sanded course — to the thick, living carpet 
in the centre. Satins and brocades, red and 
blue, green and orange, hang from window and 
balcony of every house and palace ; and every 
opening and foothold Is thronged with spectators. 
Behind the brown-turreted buildings opposite to us, 
the striped campanile and gallerled cupola of the 
Cathedral stand up In their might. Near to us, 
on the left, rises the graceful shaft of the Mangia 
tower, like a gigantic white lily, on a dark red stalk. 
Between It and us, and beyond low intervening 
roofs is a glimpse of vine-covered slopes sinking to 
the lowlands, where greenery makes way for soft 
grey and dove-like tints, with patches of sun- burnt 



io8 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

downs, backed by wooded hills and faint blue 
mountain lines. 

Meanwhile i)rass bands of indifferent merit take 
turns in amusing the expectant crowd ; a sea of fans 
is rippling all round the Piazza on the raised seats ; 
the umpires and municipal authorities are taking 
their places on the platform spanning the Costarella 
lane at the farthest corner. A few mounted 
Carabinieri issue from the court of the Signoria 
Palace and leisurely proceed to clear the peopled 
course. An easy task this : Italian holiday crowds 
are yielding as softest wax ; no threats, no pressure, 
no uplifted truncheons are needed here ; all gently 
give way before the horses and withdraw beyond 
the boundary. Naturally when the way is clear 
and all ready for the race, the usual dog appears 
careering down the course, and is as obstinately 
obtuse as his English brethren regarding the way he 
should go. But at last he is disposed of, and the 
procession begins. First come musicians in light 
grey uniforms, with sweeping white plumes on their 




AN EPISODE OF THE PALIO. 



THE PALIO OF SIENA. 1 1 1 

grey felt hats. They are followed by the seventeen 
standard bearers of the Co7it7^ade in fancy costumes 
— ranging from the fourteenth to the nineteenth 
century — who march slowly round the Piazza, 
not only flourishing their ponderous banners, 
but performing strange feats with them : now 
twirling them round their bodies, under their arms, 
between their legs, as though they were as easy to 
manipulate, as — say the tambourine of the nigger 
minstrel — then casting them high in air, catching 
them as they fall with a dexterous ease that hides 
all effort. Behind these whirling flags come the 
ten racers, and a very sorry lot they are : galled, 
collar-marked, raw-boned, ewe-necked, although at 
this moment, excited by the music and stir of 
the crowd, all were looking their best. One 
animal alone attracted our sympathy : the valiant 
little white Maremma pony with flowing tail and 
mane, whose prowess in the trial runs we had 
watched with interest, and for whose victory we 
prayed. We had heard his history and knew that 



112 ON TUSCA N HILLS. 

this veteran BiancJiino was twenty-six years old, 
had run In these races for twenty years, and been 
the winner of seventeen Palii, His experience 
enables him to avoid the difficulties of the course, 
and no horse knows so well at what angle to take 
the perilous corner by the Archives where so many 
slip and fall. He is quite at home In the Piazza, 
the music and the crowd in no way disturb him ; he 
evidently enjoys the whole thing, and shows his 
pleasure by a few elderly capers and curvets. His 
active little legs look stiff enough just now, and we 
marvel how they can ever stretch out Into any pace 
beyond the sober trot suited to his years. Yet 
this gallant veteran has a passion for the turf — if 
such a term may be applied to this stony course — 
and becomes restless and fidgety as the racing 
season draws near. Once, a few years ago, when 
as usual sent alone with a load of corn to the mill 
of the village where he lives, he faithfully performed 
this duty ; but then, instead of soberly returning 
home, trotted up the hill to Siena and straight to 



THE PALIO OF SIENA. 113 

the Stable where he is always put up during the 
races. The old priest to whom he belonged is now 
dead, and bequeathed his Bianchino to a relation, 
with the proviso that he was not to be allowed to 
run after this, his twentieth season. 

Meanwhile the grand municipal car has appeared 
in the arena. It is a comical machine, gorgeous 
with green and gold — a cross between a monster 
watering-pot and a full-sized steam-engine. The 
seventeen banners of Siena flaunt from its centre 
pole. It is drawn by four horses, with housings of 
black and white, and is filled with men dressed in 
queer white costumes of ancient cut, and crowned 
with modern stove-pipe hats. Each Coritrada con- 
tributes to the procession a standard-bearer and a 
band of seven or eight men in fancy dress. Some 
— the taller ones — are resplendent in gilded armour 
and plumed helmets ; others wear Raphaelesque cos- 
tumes, and of these the green and gold and the 
black and white, with Spanish slashings and beret 
caps with trailing feathers, are by far the most 

9 



114 ON TUSCA N HILLS. 

effective. Others, again, in reminiscence of the 
Napoleonic rule, wear the tight-fitting uniforms of 
the Empire made in various gaudy colours. Now 
appears a battlemented car bearing the city of Siena 
symbolized by a turret-crowned damsel with flowing 
fair hair. Two small boys in rose-coloured tights, 
representatives of Romulus and Remus, cling to her 
knees, and one of her hands rests on the gilt she- 
wolf that records the Roman origin of this famous 
old town. During the slow course of the proces- 
sion, a tiny mortar beside the Fonte Gaia is fired off 
from time to time. The four-footed competitors 
have withdrawn, but as the cars turn away into the 
court of the Signoria, they reappear mounted by 
their jockeys, and cantering to the starting-post 
under the umpires' gallery, amid loud cries of wel- 
come from the crowd, are soon hustled into a 
triangular, roped space. Another discharge from 
the mortar and the ropes fall ; there is a mighty 
shout and the horses are off. But there is foul play 
at these tiny races, just as at greater elsewhere. 



THE PALIO OF SIENA. 115 

Far more depends upon the jockey than on the speed 
of the horse. This year the Contrada of the Sheep 
owned the swiftest animal ; he had won four of the 
trial races, and should have been first to-day. But 
eight Contrade were leagued against him, so his 
jockey had been bribed to lose the race. And he 
lost it well by quietly rolling off his saddle at the 
easiest part of the course, w^hen the nearest horse 
was two lengths behind. 

Three times round the Piazza constituted the 
race ; and as a spectacle nothing could be more 
animated, nothing finer in colouring. From the 
high balcony of the Archives we had an admirable 
view of the whole scene. The rays of the evening 
sun still gilded the Signoria and Its tower, but the 
Piazza was in shade. The cries of the people grew 
wilder and wilder during the brief struggle. Now 
that the Montone was out by his rider's fall, the 
Bruco (Worm) and the CJiiocciola (Snail) — the latter 
represented by our Bianchino — were In the van. 
For the first two rounds our little white pony kept 



ii6 ON TUSCAN HILLS, 

well ahead ; but, alas ! In the third, his pace flagged, 
and he only came In a good second. As the Brttco 
touched the winning-post, the men of his Conti^ada 
burst into the course, bore off the fantino In their 
arms, smothered him with kisses, and petted and 
fondled the victorious horse as though he had been 
a baby. Having received the Palio — which is 
nowadays a white satin banner with a wolf em- 
broidered on it, and fringed with black and gold — the 
Brtico men marched away In triumph. They were 
leading horse and rider to return thanks to the 
Virgin in the church of their Coittrada down by 
Porta Ovile, and quadruped and biped had an equal 
share In the loving demonstrations of the women 
and children of the district. Popular excitement 
runs so high on these occasions, that husbands, it Is 
said, beat their wives and wives their husbands from 
sheer excess of joy. Let us hope that the ladles of 
the Brttco were spared similar fruits of victory. 

The painful feature of these gay Slenese fetes is 
the brutality of the jockeys. It Is bad enough to 




FONTE BKAiNDA. 



THE PALIO AT SIENA. 119 

try to hustle one another from the saddle as they 
turn the sharp corner by the Archives — a corner so 
dangerous, that here the palisades are lined with 
mattresses — but not content with that, every rider 
lashes his nearest rivals with all his strength. Some 
of the less courageous ride shielding their faces with 
their right arm. One big brute, t\\Q fantino of our 
own Contrada, the Hedgehog, showed more spite 
than all the rest, and it was satisfactory to see him 
left nowhere. 

The race ended, all the world streamed away to 
the victorious Contrada, or to the promenade of the 
Lizza. This Lizza is a public park, about the size 
of the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, and is 
to the Sienese more than Hyde Park to Londoners, 
or the wooded Cascina to the Florentines. Every 
evening, crowds of pedestrians contentedly pace its 
narrow limits, rest on its easy benches, and feast their 
eyes on the fashion and splendour of the carriage 
folk. On ordinary occasions there are seldom more 
than five or six carriages, which after driving rapidly 



I20 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

round and round until, I suppose, the horses show 
symptoms of vertigo, halt in the centre space. Then 
gentlemen come to chat and flirt with the ladies ; 
the footmen jump down and solemnly stand with 
folded arms exactly three paces behind their respec- 
tive vehicles. But on band days there is sometimes 
a gay throng of as many 2S twelve carriages, and 
on this evening of the Palio one may almost ven- 
ture to say that they numbered eighteen or twenty. 
Here, too, were tasteful illuminations of coloured 
lamps, but there was nothing of specially local 
character, excepting perhaps the lighted stalls 
where piles of big water melons showed their 
temptingly rosy flesh, and were quickly sold off in 
crisp wedges at five centimes a piece. 

The following evening the so-called Roman races 
summoned us once more to the Piazza. The horses 
ran in twos and threes, and our favourite Bianchino 
won the first heat amid a storm of applause. And 
later, after a repetition of yesterday's pageant, he 
was victor in the race of all the winning horses, and 



i 



THE PALIO AT SIENA. 121 

was carried off In triumph after this, his twenty-first 
success, to repose on the last laurels that he was to 
be allowed to reap. 

With the shouts of the people ringing in our 
ears, we made our way across the fast-emptying 
Piazza throug^h the crowded streets to the deserted 
Cathedral Square. The Duomo's chief entrance was 
already closed, but a side door admitted us to the 
hushed solemnity of the vast, silent church. A few 
worshippers were kneeling before the glittering 
shrine of the Chigi chapel ; one or two lamps 
twinkled on the High Altar ; fading gleams of even- 
ing light struggled through the high windows up 
above. But the nave and aisles were plunged in 
gloom, and the forest of dusky pillars seemed to 
stretch away to infinite distance. The silence and 
darkness were doubly impressive by contrast with 
the stirring world without, and we wandered reve- 
rently round the dim choir — no longer tenanted by 
portly canons in purple and ermine — and over Bec- 
cafumi's kings and warriors, pale ghosts beneath our 



122 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

feet. Staying to rest awhile between Pisano's sculp- 
tured lions, it was easy to forget the strife of human 
rivalries in the charmed stillness of that grand 
old Italian church. 

But the popular festivities were not yet at an end. 
On two successive Sundays open-air suppers were 
given in the two winning Cojitrade^ and were unique 
spectacles of their kind. 

Imagine the entire length of the precipitous 
narrow street dipping down from the Corso to the 
church of St. Francesco ablaze with Chinese lan- 
terns festooned across from house to house In in- 
numerable succession, and every window from 
ground to roof illuminated with the same soft 
coloured lights and crowded with women's heads ! 
Down the centre of the narrow pavement stretched 
a long vista of tables garnished with flowers and 
fruit. Bright blossoms lay in every plate, flanked 
by a goodly loaf and capacious flask of wine. 

These tables accommodate about two hundred 
guests, all members of the Contrada^ while a more 



THE PALIO AT SIENA. 123 

elegant board at the end Is reserved for the officers 
of the Contrada and the amateur patrons who contri- 
bute to the expenses of the feast. Near it is the 
table for wives and daughters, who are all singing at 
the top of their voices. Nor are bread, fruit, and 
wine the only fare ; we only saw the beginning of 
the meal, but there were heaped-up plates of poultr)- 
and roast meat, and Comacho-like flesh-pots were 
being handed about. Bottles of choice wines circu- 
lated freely at the principal table, and flasks were 
friendily held out to strangers inviting them to drink 
a toast to the Contrada. A brass band made merry 
music, and the fun went on till long after midnight. 

Seen from the street above, at the edge of the 
crowd, the long lane of coloured light, with a streak 
of star-sown sky overhead, seemed a glimpse of 
fairyland such as comes to children's dreams. 



V. 
AN APENNINE SANCTUARY 





En Hpennine Sanctuary. 

N the gorge of Bocca di Rio, about five 
miles from the Tuscan frontier, on the 
Bolognese side of the Apennines, is a 
lonely church, with a wonder-working 
Madonna much renowned in these parts. The 
history of the miracle to which it owes its origin is 
a pretty legend, although with a strong family like- 
ness to those of other famous shrines about the 
world. 

Some three hundred years ago two breakfastless 
children had gone with their cows and goats to the 



128 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

pastures at the head of the valley beyond the chest- 
nut woods. Seated under a witch elm by the water 
where three leaping rivulets unite In a single stream, 
they were bemoaning their hunger and wishing, 
perhaps, that, like their flock, they could feed on 
grass and tree-shoots, when suddenly a beautiful 
white-robed lady appeared before them. In gentlest 
tones the stranger addressed them by name, and 
bade them go home and eat their fill. 

" Mother has no bread to give us," sighed they, 
shaking their heads. 

'' She has bread ; tell her to look in the meal 
chest ! " 

" But we dare not leave the cows and goats." 

" I will mind the cows and goats. Go home and 
eat ! " Insisted the lady, with sweet command. 

The amazed children gladly scampered back to 
the cottage. Their mother met them with reproaches. 
Did they not know she had nothing to give them, 
and how had they dared to leave the animals alone. 
They repeated the words of the strange lady, and hade 



AN APENNINE SANCTUARY. 129 

their mother look In the meal chest. An hour before 
this had been empty and tightly closed ; now, Its lid 
was found gaping, and, wonder of wonders, It was 
filled to the brim with crisp new loaves ! 

The tale spread. All the neighbours rushed to 
the pasture to b6fS)ld the miraculous stranger. No 
lady was there, only the cows and goats quietly 
browsing. But there was something shining among 
the leaves of the witch elm. Resting among the 
boughs lay a pretty bas-relief of the Madonna and 
child. In Delia Robbia ware, white on a blue ground. 
Priests came, bore the heavenly gift to the hill-top, 
placed it In a rough shrine, and determined to set 
about erecting a chapel. But three nights In- suc- 
cession it disappeared, and was again found niched 
In the tree. Clearly, there, and there only, must the 
Virgin's chapel be built. Its foundations were laid, 
and the next morning it was found complete. Angel 
hands had done all the work In the night. As the 
fame of the shrine spread, offerings poured in, and 
in 1780 the present church and cloistered court were 

10 



I30 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

built. Every 15th of August there is a grand 
pilgrimage to the Madonna of Bocca dl Rio, and on 
its centenary three years ago, the delicate bas-relief 
was spoilt by the addition of a hideous gold crown. 
We sojourners at tranquil Covigllaio, where there 
is little to do and less to see, were glad to travel ten 
miles to witness the yearly fete. An early start 
was necessary to avoid the worst of the heat on the 
blazing uplands, so about five o'clock a.m. we rattled 
off in nondescript conveyances as far as the hamlet 
of Traversa, a few miles from the Futa Pass, where 
the carriage road had to be left. Then on foot and 
horseback we plodded up hill and down dale for a 
couple of hours to reach the fine chestnut woods 
encircling the sanctuary. Innumerable parties of 
peasants were converging by different tracks to 
the same spot. Men, women, and children from 
all the country-side, from Bolognese hamlets, from 
Covigllaio, Pletra Mala, from the town of Firenzuola, 
and even from far away Tmola. Many of the pil- 
grims had walked through the night, and were now 



AN A PENNINE SANCTUAR V. 131 

sleeping In the shade of the forest or basking In the 
August sun on the turf. On all sides were fine 
groups for the painter's brush. The gorge is very 
narrow, and the sanctuary invisible until at the turn 
of the road you reach the foot of a steep straight 
causeway, running up to It between gigantic fir trees 
by the torrent-side. In this avenue a sort of fair 
was going on, for vendors of wine and waffies, of 
medals and rosaries, of artificial flowers and gaudy 
feathers, had set out their wares on the low walls 
under the firs. The cloistered quadrangle at the 
top was overflowing with worshippers who could 
find no room in the church. 

Towards ten o'clock a roll of drums announced 
the approach of the procession. It Is formed lower 
down the mountain at Gambellaccia, which village, 
together with that of Castro on the Tuscan slope, 
bears the whole expense of the annual celebration. 
To see the multi-coloured train unwind from the 
woods into the sunlight space, and slowly pass up 
the causeway with waving banners and lighted 



132 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

candles, was a curious and beautiful sight. First 
came the band, followed by the standard-bearers 
wearing bright blue capes edged with gold, and 
priests In glittering vestments. Then a troop of 
young girls In white, with blue veils, and In their 
midst, mounted on a mule and throned on a red 
cloth between two oil barrels, a fair-haired babe, 
with fluttering wings and flower-crowned head. 
This was the angel appointed to uncover the 
miraculous Virgin. He was so small, this mortal 
angel, that his father walked beside him to support 
him in his seat, and he gazed about him with wide- 
open, bewildered eyes. Then came more banners 
and a miscellaneous crowd of men, women, and 
children. As the procession entered the cloister a 
train of priests with banners and incense issued from 
the church to meet it. The child-angel was dis- 
mounted and led up the steps. Formerly it rode to 
the foot of the altar, but of late years the practice 
has been discontinued — mules do not always know 
how to behave In church. The bas-relief, carefully 



AJS] APENNINE SANCTUAR V. 1 33 

taken down and uncovered, was borne out into 
the quadrangle amid a burst of music. Then the 
vSalve Regina was chaunted seven times — to implore 
a good harvest, to implore the safety of the Pope 
and confusion to his foes, and so on and so on. 
Afterwards the Madonna was carried in procession 
down the cloister steps and round the sanctuary, by 
an outer path, to another gateway before being 
restored to its post over the high altar. 

There was an indescribable buzz of enthusiasm 
among the assembled thousands. All were full of 
faith that this pious pilgrimage would save them 
from all ills for a year at least. It was fine to see 
the flashing eyes and dramatic gestures of our guide 
as he recounted the legend of the place. The 
miraculous tree is gone, but the ugly little church 
bridges the water at the junction of the three 
torrents. Formerly it was richly endowed ; now 
wealthy devotees are scarcer, and its nine farms 
have dwindled down to two. 

The ceremony ended, fun began. Most of the 



134 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

pilgrims took their pleasure quietly, ate, drank, 
rested in the shade, and brought bunches of feathers 
and flowers to deck their hats In honour of the 
occasion. Journeying back to Covlgllalo when this 
hottest day of the year was on the wane, there was 
some uproar In the crowd. Much wine had been 
consumed, and several of the cartloads of revellers 
we passed on the high-road seemed to need the aid 
of the Virgin of Bocca dl Rio to keep them safe on 
their jolting seats. 




' VL 

THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE 

MEN 




XTbe Ibonies of the flMaster^ 
Jmaoe (^cn. 

T Is a well-known fact that while emi- 
gration is almost unknown to the 
thriving peasantry of Tuscany, the 
neighbouring province of Lucca furnishes 
a very large proportion of the wandering Italians 
who go to seek their fortunes beyond the seas. 
These are nearly all Jigttrinaj, the plaster-image 
men who, with their trays of brittle distortions of 
famous statues, are to be met with In almost every 
part of the globe. Few peasant families of the 




138 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

LucchesI valleys are without some Gianni or Pletro, 
who, forsaking the parental corn- or hemp-patch, 
has trudged away to attack the world's oyster by 
means of sulphur-moulds and wax and plaster. But 
the Italian race being ever essentially home-loving, 
these LucchesI seldom settle abroad. Sooner or 
later they find their way back to their native place, 
lay out their savings on a scrap of ground, tell won- 
drous tales of travel and golden possibilities, and 
keep up the family tradition by packing off all super- 
fluous sons to seek their fortune in the same way. 
Here at the Bagni dl Lucca we are in the very 
midst of this land of figurinaj, and all the sur- 
rounding villages nestling In chestnut-glades or 
crowning hlll-tops are pointed out to us as the homes 
of returned emigrants. All are Interesting, but 
Ghivlzzano is certainly the most picturesque. A 
few miles from the Bagnl, just where the noble 
valley of the Serchio widens out Into a sunny, vine- 
tangled district, sloping upward over a chain of 
chestnut-covered hills to the bold spurs and peaks 



THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN. 139 

of the central Apennines, Ghivlzzano crowns the 
summit of one of the aforesaid hills. Encircled 
with high walls and crested by a tall campanile and 
a ruined tower dating from the days of that potent 
lady the Countess Matilda, It still shows an Imposing 
front to the world, and must have been a splendid 
place for defence In the fighting days of Castruccio 
CastracanI, whose birthplace It was. 

And now as then, though windows have here and 
there been opened In the grim old walls, there is 
but one gate to Ghivlzzano ; It Is still a castello — as 
these walled villages are called — and generation 
after generation of Its Inhabitants contentedly tramp 
round two-thirds of Its circuit, after their day's 
labour In the fields, to reach that solitary place of 
ingress. It seems strange that no successful 
figurinaio should have brought back some public 
spirit as well as qtmttrini from his distant wander- 
ings, and sought to let In light and air to the 
cooped-up dwellings by knocking down a few bits 
of the useless walls. Italians, however, are the 



I40 O.V TUSCAN HILLS. 

most conservative, least revolutionary of races, and 
the fact that a thing has always been, Is with them 
an excellent reason why It should always continue 
to be. Besides, all the more thrivlnor inhabitants — 
chiefly returned emigrants — have spread themselves 
outside the village, and the hill-side toward the 
high-road is dotted with tiny farms and a few gayly 
painted houses. But apart from quattriniy the 
nomadic tendencies of Ghivizzano have one result 
which is comical enough to the casual visitor. 
Halting for breath outside the gateway of this Old 
World Italian village. It was startling to be suddenly 
accosted by a voice from an upper window with a 
'* Good evening, ma'am," in very tolerable English. 
Castruccio's ghost would have been far less surprising. 
Then, as we presently dived into a vaulted 
passage In the thickness of the wall, which runs 
nearly all round Ghivizzano, the same voice — close 
at hand now — said : '' Very bad road, that way, 
ma'am ; you caant get on," In an accent which told 
that the speaker had not studied the English 



THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN. \\\ 

language among the "upper ten." He was quite 
young, but had come back from America lamed for 
life, and had settled down in his native place. He 
was beginning to tell us his adventures, when a 
brisk, withered old man with a face like a dried 
herring — before soaking — pounced upon us in a 
friendly way, and volunteered to take us up to the 
church. He too spoke English, though less fluently 
than the other, and gladly relapsed into his native 
tongue on finding that we understood it rather better 
than we understood his English. He was very 
voluble, and willing as Othello to recount his experi- 
ences. Of course he had been a figurinaio, and 
had only recently retired from his wandering busi- 
ness. He was the owner of a couple of houses and 
several fields, but his income seemed to be small — 
it certainly allowed no margin for soap — and he did 
not disdain to supplement it by filling the office of 
clock-winder to the commune for the magnificent 
weekly salary of ten centimes. 

A perfect labyrinth of narrow lanes is crammed 



142 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

into the tiny circuit of Ghlvlzzano's walls. First of 
all — undeterred by the cripple's warning — we plunged 
into the dark vaulted passage, popularly known as 
Castrucclo's dungeons, but which probably served 
as a covered way of communication between different 
points of the fortifications. The so-called dungeons 
are now tenanted by captives who greeted us with 
friendly grunts as we passed their doors. Now 
stumbling over fallen masonry, now climbing steep 
steps, diving under this blackened archway and 
that, we soon found ourselves back in the main 
street, not far from our starting-point. We were 
struck by the well-to-do air of the solid, well-built, 
low-browed houses. Picturesquely dingy, they are 
neither ruinous nor poverty-stricken. Their dark- 
ness and dirt are but the natural outcome of the 
universal Indifference of the Italian lower classes 
to the state of their dwelHngs. For them a house 
is simply the shelter wherein they sleep and will 
probably die. All else, their pleasures as their 
labours, are carried on out of doors. 



THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN. 143 

Some of these Ghlvlzzano houses have outer 
stairs ending In a loggia, forming most pictorial 
backgrounds to the groups of inhabitants. They 
are by no means overrun by visitors, so we were 
stared at with friendly interest, and a small crowd 
soon gathered at our heels. The grown people 
looked well fed, the children fat and healthy. By 
the raised well in one corner of a tiny triangular 
piazza, two pretty girls were standing with copper 
water-vessels poised on their heads. Hard by, at 
the head of some stone steps, a black-eyed baby was 
dancing on his mother's lap, crowing and clapping 
his hands, while his pretty sister, a plump little 
maiden of some three years old, eating her supper 
lower down, flourished her wooden spoon, and 
smiled at us through a tangle of fair curls. As we 
looked at the pretty picture, we were startled by a 
dreary moan. An old beggar-woman was kneeling 
behind us with outstretched hand. The poor 
creature was evidently daft, for, though we gave 
her something, she knelt to us again a few minutes 
later. It was a painful sight. 



144 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

But now we have mounted a long, wide flight of 
steps, most suggestive of old-time processions and 
martial shows, have reached the grassy platform in 
front of the church, and our guide, the figurinaio^ 
is holding forth to us on the chief events of his life. 
He knows England well, he says, has been all over 
it, but seems to have closer acquaintance with Its 
jails than with any other of Its institutions. He 
admits that he did not confine his energies to the 
sale of plaster figures, but is mysterious as to his 
other avocations. New York he speaks of in the 
friendliest manner ; he has been to San Francisco, 
but his dearest reminiscences are the glories of the 
city which he Is pleased to pronounce Sencenatl. It 
was there. It seems, that he made a good deal of 
money ; but he added, with a droll twinkle In his 
puckery old eyes, that the greater part of It was 
spent before he reached home. 

The Ghivizzano church Is singularly poor and 
bare, and, unlike the generality of churches In this 
part of Italy, has absolutely nothing to show in the 



THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN. 145 

way of architecture, pictures, or Robbia ware. But 
there is plenty to be seen outside its doors. Built 
on the very summit of the hill, its arched loggia 
rests on a rocky ledge which drops sheer down into 
a steep and leafy chestnut-glade. Farther on, you 
overlook the cluster of red-brown roofs to a cjreat 
stretch of the Serchio Valley. The bold cliffs and 
wooded gorges of Gallicano crowd close to the 
farther bank of the river, and, save one luminous 
peak, shut out the giants of the Carrara range. 
But on this side of the winding, glistening river 
a great velvety patch of forest stretches away 
as far as Ponte all' Ania ; little towns and villaees 
are scattered about on the hillsides ; the fields and 
vineyards are arabesqued with woodland strips, and 
miles away, perched on a bold height, and backed 
by the loftiest of the guardian mountains, you can 
see the walls and towers of Barga, once a nest of 
warriors, whose struggles for independence I have 
related in another chapter. And all this is bathed in 
the fleeting sweetness of the after-glow, when every 

II 



146 OX TUSCAN HILLS. 

tint shows forth in softest Intensity before fading 
into night. 

But I am not long left to peaceful contemplation 
of evening effects. A rough-looking lad calmly 
seats himself beside me on the low parapet, and stares 
at me pertinaciously, but not impertinently. I see 
more boys flocking round, so I get up and peep in 
at the door of the dim little church. About a 
score of women and children are droning out their 
evening prayer in a melancholy chant. One or two 
tiny lights twinkle on a side-altar. Curiosity soon 
overcomes devotion on the part of the younger 
members of the congregation, and, having returned 
to my wall^ I am presently interviewed by a group 
of little girls, who, whispering and giggling, stand a 
few paces from me, and take stock of everything 
about me. To the victim this soon became mono- 
tonous ; so, singling out one of the mites, an odd 
little creature with a waist almost reaching to her 
knees, I asked her to tell me her name. This 
astounding request filled her with dismay, and put 



THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN. 147 

her companions to flight. Her giggles ceased ; she 
covered her face with her hands ; she wriggled this 
way and that, as though I were holding her by some 
fearsome spell. But my companion, the big boy, 
came to her aid ; he w^as perfectly ready to answer 
questions. The child was his sister, and, after he 
had administered a few encouraging pokes and 
nudges, the queer thing at last gasped out that her 
name was Penelope, and that she was eight years of 
age. Having made this statement, she Instantly 
scampered away to the other end of the loggia, and 
was soon giggling as before. 

Nothing disperses small gazers like asking a few 
questions ; on big ones It has a precisely opposite 
effect. 

And now I had another companion, a loquacious 
matron, who had two sons away In America. She 
eagerly Inquired if I were American, and, on learning 
that I was English, her esteem for me diminished. 
Perhaps, however, I had heard of America, she 
added, with a benevolent smile. To these poor 



148 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

people the States are a sort of earthly paradise, 
teeming with golden possibilities — England merely 
a station on the way. I asked if her sons were 
figurinaj. At first they were, she said, now they 
had other employments. They w^ere good lads, 
sent her money occasionally, and talked of returning 
soon. As to how they earned their living — well, 
they did earn it. They could not get their bread 
for nothing, even in America si sa. 

All this time the others of the party had been up 
in the campanile. This is not lofty, so the view is 
little more extended than from the loggia below. 
Hearing a voice raised in loud indignation, I glanced 
upward. I beheld a black and w^ithered arm, easily 
recognizable as the property of our travelled cice- 
rone, protruding from one of the embrasures, and 
vehemently sawing the air. I learned afterward 
that it was the subject of taxes which had aroused 
the old man's wrath. The government taxes are 
heavy enough, but the municipal dues are those that 
excite most discontent. Worst of all is th^focafico, 



THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN. 149 

or hearth-tax, paid by every head of a family, and 
which seems to be levied in a very arbitrary manner. 
The old fellow was still speaking of his wrongs 
when my friends came out of the tower. At a 
climax in his narrative he suddenly tore his cap 
from his head, and cast it far from him. That was 
a great relief to his feelings ; he became calm, and 
the stout woman took up the doleful strain, and 
inveighed in her turn against the focatico. And 
now the vesper prayer was over, and the scanty 
congregation joined our crowd outside. From the 
shadowy arch of a side-door appeared a vision of 
age and infancy worthy of a master's brush. A 
haggard, bent, and withered crone, on whose 
wrinkled visage there yet lingered in some strange 
way traces of long-past beauty, came tottering down 
the step holding by the hand a plump darling of a 
baby boy, with laughing eyes, gleaming little teeth, 
and a thick crop of curly brown hair. The one was 
so feeble, the other so young, both trod so uncer- 
tainly, that it was hard to say which supported the 



ISO ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

Other. Half leading, half led, withered feet and 
baby toes stumbled toward the loggia till they 
reached one of the dismal stones covering what 
was, till a year or two ago, the general grave-pit for 
Ghivizzano's dead. Here the poor creature sank 
down on her stiffened knees and mumbled out a 
prayer, perhaps for some long-lost love of her own, 
perhaps for the father of the sturdy babe clinging to 
her skirts, and to whose arm she still clung. Soon 
we placed a bit of money in the boy's little, grimy 
hand, and the grandmother — or great-grandmother 
— croaked out her thanks, and told us that Tonino 
could not talk, being not yet two years old. Cer- 
tainly Tonino was a splendid little fellow, and his 
lips parted in an amiable, confiding smile as his 
fingers closed over his coin. His manly costume of 
trousers, braces, and shirt only gave fuller emphasis 
to his rounded, baby limbs. As the couple tottered 
away, the poor old woman In her feeble agedness 
looked as though her sole hold upon life was through 
that infant, whose strength lay all before him. 



THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN. 151 

The gloaming was almost over now, the chestnut 
woods fast losing their colour ; so, hurriedly going 
down another narrow street and up a steep vineyard 
path, we scrambled to the ruins of Castrucclo's fort- 
ress, which are so thickly set about with trees and 
vines that nothing is to be seen when you get there. 

A fresh crowd of men, women, and children was 
In waiting to escort us to the town-gate. We asked 
one woman if she too had been In America. '' No," 
she said with a sigh ; adding, as she glanced around 
at her companions, '' but we would all go directly 
if we could." And her companions nodded and 
echoed the wish. 

But who was this whom we suddenly caught sight 
of, sitting on the wall with folded arms outside the 
gate ? Surely this respectable, black-coated, straw- 
hatted man, with shaven cheeks and a grey goatee 
beneath his chin, could be no native of Ghivizzano ! 
But, In spite of his transatlantic appearance, he was 
only a x^\MXX\^di Jigiirinaio. He began to talk to us 
immediately, and spoke of his travels. He knew 



152 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

English well, had sold plaster images In the States, 
sold fish at San Francisco, lived at Montevideo, and 
had been to all the East Indian Presidencies. Like 
all the rest, he spoke enthusiastically of America, 
but objected to the climate of the East Indies. 
Things had gone well with him, he said ; he liked 
wandering about the world, and but for his family 
and his farm down there among the chestnuts he 
should be ready to go away again to-morrow. There 
was plenty of business capacity In his keen old face ; 
also. If his eyes did not belie him, a turn for sharp 
practice. In his way he was a pralser of past times. 
Those were the clays for business, w^hen he was 
young, he exclaimed, with an expressive flourish of 
his arms. Especially In California ; there. Indeed, 
one made money. Now — with a contemptuous 
movement of his under lip — now affari went badly. 
Affari were at an end almost everywhere. We 
thouo^ht we had heard somethinor like this before 
from men In other ranks of life. Then he gave us 
some Information about Ghlvlzzano. It contained, 
he told us, fifty-seven families; nearly all had houses 



THE HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN. 153 

of their own, their pasture, their scrap of land. Few 
were exactly poor, none exactly rich. Wasn't he 
rich ? Well, he had nothing to complain of ; he 
might have been worse off But the taxes were 
terrible, and the commune harassed them sadly. 
No — Ghivizzano was not a commune in itself, only 
a fraction of that of Coreglia, and one had to tramp 
all the way up in the hills there to pay the focatico, 
etc. Did all his fellow Jigurinaj come back with 
their pockets as full as his own ? Certainly not ; 
'' one had to know how to do business ! " The Ghi- 
vizzano men weren't as successful as some others. 
Did we see that village right away up there upon 
the hillside across the river ? Well, that village had 
grown rich, positively rich, by the trade. The trade 
wasn't what it once was, when he was young — but 
w^hat else could one do with all one's boys ? 

And, indeed, with the swarms of tiny children 
that we had seen surging round the corners and 
overflowing the doorways of Ghivizzano, it was 
plain that many of these human figures would have 
to earn their bread by figures in plaster. 



' VII. 
ITALIAN MOVING 




Italian flbovincj* 



^ 




T is impossible to live long In any 
Italian city without being struck by 
the perpetual changes of habitation of 
all one's friends and acquaintances. 
With the exception of the local aristocracy, who 
generation after generation are born, live, and die In 
the same massive family mansions, no one seems to 
care to pass more than one or two years in the same 
house. And as for the small-fry of seamstresses, 
milliners, and work-people of all kinds, once a year 
is hardly often enough to make a fresh list of their 



ON TUSCAN HILLS. 



addresses. The great *' flitting " days here in 
Florence are the ist of November and the ist of 
May ; so, for a week or so before and after these 
dates, the streets are encumbered by vans, carts, 
and hand-barrows, piled with miscellaneous articles 
of furniture — piled so high too, and so lightly 
secured, that it is marvellous how they escape ruin, 
or reach their haven unwrecked. Naturally, more 
people move In the spring than In autumn, when, 
what with rain, wind, and mud, It is difficult to avoid 
more or less damage to all your goods and chattels. 
In England a move is only undertaken after long 
reflection and careful consideration of ways and 
means, for even wealthy families may shrink from 
rushing lightly Into the expense and trouble in- 
evitable to a change of abode. How, then, is it 
that here in Italy the very classes to whom expense 
is no trifling thing, and whose incomes are reckoned 
by francs, not pounds, are precisely those who are 
continually transferring their Lares and Penates to 
fresh quarters — now east, now west, to the north, 



ITALIAN MO VI AG. 1 59 

or to the south of the town ? It can hardly be in 
search of comfort, for, even with plenty of money at 
your command, it takes a certain time to adapt your- 
self to a new home, and, with the probability of 
changing again within six or twelve months, it is 
hardly worth while to remedy its defects or fit your 
belongings to their new position. But, as a rule, 
Italians are ignorant of the first elements of material 
domestic comfort. The houses are made to be let, 
not to make their inmates comfortable ; and when 
the builder of middle-class dwellings has placed the 
kitchen in convenient proximity to the dining-room 
— and generally to the entrance-door of your flat — 
he conceives that every requirement has been ful- 
filled. I am inclined to think that the continual 
"flitting" of people of small means, here in Florence, 
merely shows that most houses are so comfortless 
that it is seldom possible to change for the worse. 
And as people with a national disregard for comfort 
and home elegance care little for harmony between 
wall-papers and furniture, and seldom possess any 



i6o ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

carpets worth mentioning, few of the obstacles, which 
— mere expense apart — surge up in the ordinary 
householder's mind at the idea of a move, have much 
power over the Italian paterfamilias when he de- 
cides to give his landlord warning. Indeed, when 
his purse is low, change is almost a measure of 
economy, owing to the prevailing Florentine method 
of rent-paying. As I have said, houses let from the 
I St of May and the ist of November, but this by no 
means implies that your rent only falls due at those 
dates. You positively have to pay it over eight 
months in advance, that is, about the middle of 
February or August, for the term beginning with 
the following May or November. Thus by giving 
notice and avoiding actually fixing another apart- 
ment until a week or so before leaving his old one, 
the impecunious Florentine can stave off the evil 
day of payment at least two months. So, from this 
and other causes, it sometimes happens that you see 
one family tumbling into their new quarters the very 
day that its old occupants are tumbling out ; and 



1 TA LI AN MO VI NG. 1 6 1 

great are the confusion, turmoil, litter, bad language, 
and general mixing up of rickety possessions thereby 
occasioned. Yet after all there is little of the 
genuine anxiety or excitement manifested by 
northerners on similar occasions. The dramatic 
gestures, the pagan interjections that apparently 
mean so much, are for the most part mere con- 
ventional expressions and modes of speech. As a 
rule, no one is out of temper, no one in a hurry. 
Life Is long and moving short, might well be the 
motto of the upholsterer and carpenter, who are 
the usual superintendents of these domestic changes. 
For the extent of their zeal is to get the beds you 
sleep In, the tables you eat on, transferred to the 
new house from the old within the hours of their 
working-day. Other things will right themselves 
naturally In course of time ; these are the sole 
essentials, and your Florentine paterfamilias de- 
mands but little more. His children are revelllnor 
In the general disorganization of domestic matters, 
and If his wife be In despair, well, he can always 

12 



1 62 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

slip off to his cafi out of hearing of her shrill 
grumblings. And — as many of my readers may 
know — the soft Italian tongue does not always issue 
very softly from the feminine mouth. 

Then, as for the servants, they enjoy the upset 
almost as much as the children. Disorder is their 
natural element. Unlike English domestics, who 
object to doing anything but their own work, Italian 
servants throw into extra and abnormal labour all the 
zeal which they can seldom be persuaded to devote to 
their daily duties. To them it is a positive treat to 
go without their regular dinner for once in a way ; a 
delightful variation to refresh themselves with slices 
of ham or sausage from the nearest shop, seated on 
a pile of bedding, or a case of crockery, and carry- 
ing on sportive conversation with gay young face hini 
(porters) and carpenters. 

And here let me say eit passant that, although 
Italian maid-servants are but too commonly lazy, 
untidy, slipshod wenches, doing as little as they can, 
and only blossoming. Into energy on/esfa days, when 



ITALIAN MOVING. 163 

— leaving everything at sixes and sevens — they sally 
forth in gaudiest festival array ; and although the best 
of them seldom accomplish more than half of the 
daily tasks of a British handmaiden, yet an Italian 
man-servant is the very best in the world. He will 
do three times as much work as an English indoor- 
man, for here men are kept not for show, but for use ; 
and English or American people wintering In Italy 
would spare themselves much annoyance by conform- 
ing to the customs of the country, and engaging men 
instead of women for kitchen and parlour work. 
For, if chosen intelligently, your Italian man-servant 
is a treasure. He may fail to lay the table with 
consummate elegance, certainly he will not keep your 
silver at its highest polish ; but, besides his regular 
work, he will always be ready and willing to assist 
the other servants. He will make your beds if re- 
quired, nurse your baby, button your boots, and be 
generally depended upon for all manner of odd jobs. 
Not long ago an article appeared in a well-known 
London paper containing some very sweeping stric- 



i64 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

tures upon Italian servants, which, though doubtless 
entirely unexaggerated, would have had greater value 
had the writer mentioned what part of Italy was 
the scene of her woful experiences. The Boot com- 
prises so many different races, different degrees of 
civilization, that what is perfectly true of one part 
of the peninsula fails to give any correct view of 
another. Florence, for instance, is by no means 
famous for good servants, yet the present writer, 
during a residence of many years, has never had the 
ill luck to fall in w^ith any such desperate '' ne'er-do- 
wells " as those described in the paper on *' Italian 
Servants versus English." There Is one point which, 
it seems to me, English employers do not sufficiently 
take into account in dealing with their Italian ser- 
vants — namely, that It Is best to be content with 
modifying certain of their national characteristics, 
without wasting time and temper in vain endeavours 
to convert them Into the well-trained, noiseless 
domestics of an English household. Taken at their 
worst, they have the qualities of their defects, and 



ITALIAN MO VING. 165 

that Is why they are so active and helpful In the (to 
them) delightful business of a change of house. 

Now, to give a good notion of a move conducted 
on the approved Florentine principle, k will be as 
well to relate my personal experiences while shifting 
our belongings from a noisy street on the south side 
of the Arno to our present lovely home on the sunny 
second floor of an historic palace v/Ith the finest 
garden In Florence. A garden as yet untouched by 
the local modern mania for prim beds and rockwork, 
set about with noble trees, radiant with flow^ers, and 
musical with bird-voices and the splashing of foun- 
tains. 

The first question to be settled was whether to 
employ railway-vans, and thus effect an expeditious 
move regardless of breakages, or to conf.de entirely 
in my upholsterer and let him transfer our chattels In 
far slower but also far safer fashion. A nd, as every- 
thing had to be carried down the one hundred and 
two stairs of the old apartment and up the sixty- 
seven stairs of the new, at ihe opposite end of the 



i66 ON TUSCAN HILLS, 

town, it seemed better to give up all Idea of the 
reckless Innovation of moving everything at once, 
and content one's self with the easy-going, old- 
fashioned ways. Accordingly, my worthy uphols- 
terer Is summoned from his littery shop In Via 
Romana, where perpetual quilting of cotton counter- 
panes Is carried on, and he Is requested to name his 
price and say In how many days he can undertake to 
strip our rooms and put all things In order In the 
new home. His wrinkled, smiling visage, not un- 
like that of a benevolent frog, and which nature 
certainly designed for a comic actor rather than an 
upholsterer, Instantly expands Into a broader grin 
than usual. How long would he take ? He shifted 
from one leg to the other, scratched his head, en- 
joyed the comic aspect of British haste, and finally 
committed himself to the opinion that all might be 
done In four or five days, provided the weather held up. 
We were in October, so continued fine weather 
was far from certain ; but perhaps If we began at 
once, since the new apartment was already at our 



ITALIAN MO VING. i (i-j 

disposal, we might be settled before the autumn 
rains set In. So it was finally arranged that he 
should begin in a day or so, and that he was to pro- 
vide the necessary carts and horses. This he under- 
took, twinkling more merrily than ever as he bade 
us farewell ; and on the appointed morning we were 
aroused at a very early hour by the arrival of four 
men and a boy, and much creaking and banging, 
rustling of straw and clatter of crockery told us that 
the dismantling process had begun. This energy 
promised w^ell, and already w^e Imagined ourselves 
Installed In our newly papered south rooms over- 
looking that bright garden, and we briskly rose and 
proceeded to the packing of books and dresses, with 
a feeling that there was not a moment to be lost. 

Going out an hour or so later, we were in time to 
witness the starting of the first load. But where 
were the horses and waggons which imagination had 
shown us standing all this time beneath the archway 
at the bottom of our hundred and two steps ? All 
that was to be seen was a moderate-sized hand-cart, 



1 68 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

easily propelled by two men. We were — so to 
speak — about to be moved In a wheelbarrow ! No 
wonder that that perfidious old man of the comic 
countenance had twinkled so merrily on being In- 
vested with the responsibility of choosing vans and 
horses! But we were already sufficiently imbued 
with the spirit of the land of our adoption to resign 
ourselves to fate and the upholsterer, and hope for 
great results from small commencements. 

And for the first two days all went smoothly 
enough, and the cheery presence of Signor Giovanni 
the upholstere^ at least gave animation to his men. 
As for the small boy, edict of banishment had to be 
pronounced against him. We had had misgivings 
of him from the first, and lie soon justlfiied them. 
With .the reckless aba^idon oi youth he had pounced 
upon a carefully-packed basket of English crockery, 
and, choosing to Imagine it empty, hoisted it upside 
down on his head. One Instant, and the floor was 
scattered with fragments of toilet ware only to be 
matched in the Strand. 



ITALIAN MOVING. 169 

Then a steady rain set In, and we shivered over a 
small fire In a curtalnless, carpetless room, speculating 
as to whether the chairs and tables carried downstairs 
a couple of hours earlier had reached thgjrdestlnatlon 
before the storm broke. Only later did we ascertain 
that they had gone no farther than the archway. 
No oilcloth was forthcoming to cover the contents 
of the cart ; and the men, we learnt, were too 
heated by their exertions to be able to venture 
through the streets In the rain ! Florentines cherish 
the delusion that wet weather Is so extraordinary an 
occurrence that no provision need be made against 
it. Even for pianos no covered carts are used ; 
they are paraded through the town exhibiting their 
silk and varnish to all beholders, and merely fastened 
by leather straps to small trucks. 

So once more we had to resign ourselves to fate, 
and for a whole week the rain beat against our panes, 
and all that could be done was to hang pictures in 
the new home, arrange the few articles already there, 
and bid beaming Signor Giovanni (whose smiles 



I70 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

began to seem fiendish) profit by the delay to com- 
plete necessary alterations of window-cornlces and 
curtains. 

Complete ! we little knew how far from completion 
all these things were. 

Only at the end of twelve miserable days were we 
able to surrender the keys of our old home, and bid 
good-bye to our southern view, across closely-clus- 
tered roofs, of fair Bellosguardo and the Ilex avenue 
of Pogglo Imperlale — only at the end of four 
months did we see the last of carpenters and up- 
holsterers in our new abode. For, as soon as we were 
encamped — I may not say settled — In the palace 
with the garden, our comic upholsterer deserted us, 
and went to beam elsewhere upon other people's 
carpets and curtains. The only result to be attained 
by stern messages and supplicating appeals was an 
occasional flying visit, at the oddest hours, from one 
or other of his sons. 

Coming home wearied out In the dark winter 
afternoons, and hoping for an Interval of rest and 



ITALIAN MO VING. 1 7 1 

solitude before dinner, we would be startled, on 
entering our bedroom, by a voice as from the skies, 
and behold the airy Beppo — the tasteful member of 
SIgnor Giovanni's family — perched on 2t4a4der, put- 
ting up bed-curtains that had been In his hands for 
weeks. Another time, still later in the day, we found 
the stout Cesare — whose figure was so valuable In 
the stretching of carpets — nailing a forgotten trim- 
ming on our favourite arm-chair. 

Apropos to carpets, the Anglo-Saxon mind has to 
abandon all accustomed grooves of thought with 
regard to these useful elements of comfort. In 
England — until Oriental rugs and Indian matting 
came in fashion — we had a fixed Idea that they 
should be cut to fit the rooms for which they were 
intended. In Italy, on the contrary, it is considered 
great waste to cut off corners and edges. These can 
be turned under, you know, ready for use In case 
you have bigger rooms the next time you move. 
And so, always with an eye to future changes, your 
upholsterer cannot see the necessity of fitting your 



^* 



172 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

carpets to your present floors. When you Indig- 
nantly show him how all these hillocks and protuber- 
ances prevent your furniture from standing firmly 
against the walls, how every piece Is toppling forward, 
you are smilingly asked to have patience. Then, 
in a twinkling, little wedges and chips of any sort of 
wood your carpenter may have left about, are Inserted 
beneath the tottering legs, and you are triumphantly 
begged to observe that all Is now as It should be. 
And gradually you come to think so too, and re- 
nounce struggling against the Inevitable, at least as 
regards the laying of carpets. 

But on one point you must be Inflexible, or mad- 
ness mio^ht result. 

Florentine carpenters and cabinet-makers take 
measurements as accurately as can be desired, but 
they seldom conform to them, and I shudder to think 
of the time and energy required to have a curtain- 
cornice made to fit, and when It does fit to have It 
put up in a straight line. 

It Is a very complicated proceeding. First of all. 



ITALIAN MO VING. 173 

iron clamps have to be Inserted In the wall, and, as 
neither upholsterer nor carpenter will undertake this 
job, you have to secure the attendance^^iC^an iron- 
smith with the clamps, and of a mason to fasten 
them to the wall. Then the carpenter has to pre- 
pare the wooden framework to which cornice and 
vallance are to be nailed. The mason can do his 
share of the performance Independently ; but, if you 
cannot assemble upholsterer, carpenter, and smith at 
one and the same time, dire confusion follows. The 
clamps are too short, or the board too narrow, or 
the cornice too long. All preliminary flourishing of 
the foot-rule has been in vain If your trinity cannot 
discuss the matter on the spot. And one day the 
carpenter is engaged, the next the upholsterer misses 
his appointment, the third no smith is forthcoming; 
and so on till you despair of ever seeing the pile of 
curtains In the corner hung up In their appointed 
places. When at last, after long delay, you are 
invited to come and see how elegantly they have 
been draped, you find, to your horror, that the whole 



174 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

erection is hopelessly crooked, that all must be done 
over again. 

But here so many harrowing recollections crowd 
upon my mind that it is best to turn to pleasanter 
subjects. 

This moving tale would be incomplete without 
some mention of another prominent character in it. 
Let me introduce my carpenter. He is a thin, wiry 
man, with a sour mouth and self-asserting nose of 
the particular kind of retroussd which experience 
disposes me to regard as significant of the intensest 
conceit. This worthy has his merits : he is quick, 
active, and tolerably punctual, and if he would con- 
fine himself to his special business, and note down 
his measurements, he would be a very satisfactory 
carpenter and joiner. But, unfortunately, he is apt 
to consider himself a slighted genius, and thinks that 
he, and he alone, should have the supreme com- 
mand of all that is going on. He had a severe 
attack of wounded pride on finding that wardrobes 
which he had made were, in the course of the move, 



ITALIAN MOVING. 



1 3 



taken down and put together again by the profane 
fingers of SIgnor Giovanni and his minions. He 
could have done it all in half the time, he said, 
without help from any one. This man's wife is a 
needlewoman, and, happening to want a cradle 
trimm.ed in a particular fashion, we told him to send 
his wife to do this under our own superintendence. 
He promptly offered to trim the cradle himself, and 
I had to acknowledge a weak preference for needles 
and thread rather than hammer and nails, before 
being allowed to obtain his wife's services. She 
came ; but to my amazement her husband came too ; 
and, as he bullied her Into executing my orders 
according to his own peculiar Interpretation of them, 
the result was not completely satisfactory. He, 
however, was highly delighted with the achieve- 
ment, and confided to one of the servants that he 
knew that he could fit ladles' dresses far better than 
his wife. This man's burning desire is to be first 
fiddle on all occasions, and we have had to leave off 
engaging nlm as waiter on company nights, simply 



176 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

because he tries to usurp the reins of government, 
and, Instead of helping our servants, orders them 
about in a totally absurd and exasperating manner. 

And now, having said so much of the troubles of 
our move, this paper may fittingly conclude with a 
description of the house In which they came to an 
end. Possibly we may have to move again some 
day, but meanwhile we consider ourselves settled, 
and love our picturesque abode In spite of Its sundry 
defects. Above all, It Is an historic palace,^ for its 
owner and our landlord Is the most noble Count 
Ugoiino della Gherardesca, lineal descendant of him 
who met his death In the Hunger Tower of Pisa. 
Over the principal entrance Is a huge coronet sculp- 
tured in stone, but close beside the gate, by which 
we tenants enter, is a marble slab recording that 
here, In the days of Savonarola, dwelt Bartolommeo 
Scala, Secretary to the Republic, and husband to a 
dau^rhter of the house of Gherardesca. Pushlnor 



' It has been sold, since the Count's death, to the ex-Khedive, 
Ismail Pasha. 



ITALIAN MO VING. i ii 

Open this heavy gate, we find ourselves in a gravelled 
court divided from the garden by railings that, in 
this summer season, are thickly garlanded with 
clustering roses and the graceful foliage of the 
wisteria, soon to be crowned for the second time by 
scented wreaths of lilac blossoms. Then turning in 
by the porter's lodge under the arcade, we climb one 
of the steepest stairs in Florence, and have time to 
lose our breath before being stopped by a tall iron 
gate beyond which more stairs await us, and which 
is our frontier fortress. And, to add to its defensive 
appearance, there is a small opening In the wall 
above through which the garrison may ascertain 
whether friends or foes are ringing the modern sub- 
stitute for the horn of the Middle Ages. But as the 
gate closes behind us, and the door at the head of 
the stairs is opened, we have a glimpse of Dante's 
Florence, for we see three slender towers in a 
gracious group beyond intervening roofs and 
gardens. 

These are Arnolfo's Tower, its smaller rival of 

13 



178 ON TUSCAN HILLS. 

the Bargello, and the spired belfry of the Badia. 
The marbled mass of the Duomo hides from us all 
save one corner of Giotto's Campanile, and quite 
shuts out the lovely hill of Bellosguardo. Going 
out into the long balcony that stretches from wing 
to wing of this southern front, we look over the 
garden where huge magnolias hold up to us their 
creamy chalices of scent, and great South American 
firs sweep the lawn near the camellia-hedge with 
their trailing branches. Close to our farthest window 
a tall tulip-tree stands almost within reach, and 
covered with pale, red-flecked flowers about which 
foraging parties of bees are ever circling. Beneath 
is the arcade where Tito Melema showed his stolen 
gems to Bartolommeo Scala, and brought his learn- 
ing to bear on that bitter strife of epigrams in which 
the fat historian had just been worsted by Politian. 

Farther off to the west is a stalwart stone-pine, 
which even in Scala's time must have been of long 
growth, and our one western window looks down on 
a soft, green lawn dotted with azaleas and enclosed 



ITALIAN MO VING. 1 79 

by a grove of lofty trees. And, climbing another 
and still steeper flight of stairs, we come out on a 
turreted terrace, from which we can see half Tuscany. 
The city lies before us against its background of 
southern hills ; Fiesole is behind us ; to the east we 
look away to the Falterona, Vallombrosa, and the 
Arezzo Mountains ; to the north-west we have the 
chain of the Pistojan Apennines ; to the south-west 
the translucent Carrara Peaks are visible. Trees 
and gardens fill the foreground ; beyond are towers 
and domes and cypress-streaked hillsides dotted 
with numerous villas. All day the landscape quivers 
with white heat, mists, or soft blue haze. Toward 
evening these clear away, and sky and hills rival 
each other in glorious tints found nowhere but on 
Nature's palette. By day swallows cry sweetly in 
their circling flights ; by night nightingales raise 
their voices in the Gherardesca thickets ; the chiu- 
owl gently hoots his little joys and troubles ; the 
screech-owl perches on a neighbouring roof and 
gives out his dismal note ; frogs innumerable babble 



I So 



ON TUSCAN HILLS. 



and trill and croak in all the pieces of water ; fire- 
flies flash among the trees like falling fragments of 
the stars gleaming overhead ; and only now and 
then a rattle of wheels and passing shouts in the 
quiet street remind us that we are not in the country, 
but within half a mile of the noisy heart of the city 
of Florence. 




tDenetian Maters. 



."J? 



I. 

SUMMER IN VENICE 




Summer in l^enice. 

" Venice seems the type 
Of life — 'twixt blue and blue extends a stripe, 
As life, the somewhat, hangs 'twixt naught and naught." 

Robert Browning. 

ENICE in summer! To most ears the 
words seem synonymous with much heat, 
bad odours, and mosquitoes innumerable. 
These are there, it is true, yet may all 
be escaped. Venice is the one city of Italy where 
summer days need not be spent in darkened rooms, 
where heat may be defied, and evening glories and 
the cool, salt breath of the lagoon bring delights 




1 86 VENETIAN WATERS. 

far outweighing the chance discomfort of fervid 
noons. 

But to enjoy your summer it is essential to live 
in private lodgings. Then, and then only, you feel 
the full charm of Venetian magic. No tourist-talk 
breaks the spell, no dinner-bell curtails your study 
of sea and sky, and every door can be left open to 
invite free draughts of air. Instead of the irksome 
glare and chatter of a crowded table d'hote, you have 
the choice of quiet meals in your own dim dining- 
room, of frugal repasts beneath the vines of the 
artist-haunted restaurant, on the Zattere beside the 
Giudecca Canal, or of set dinners at the Lido Baths, 
where courses of changing effects on waves and sky 
and distant strip of tree- fringed coast feast your eyes 
better than the too-dilatory dishes nourish your body. 

As for the dreaded mosquitoes, their numbers are 
few until the hungry swallows have flown, and they 
are too well engaged on fresh English blood in the 
hotels near the Salute and along the Riva to make 
many raids on private houses. 



SUMMER IN VENICE. 187 

The ideal Venetian lodging should be, of course, 
in some palace of historic name, with carven bal- 
conies, painted arches, and lofty, echoing halls. 
Such lodgings, however, are seldom to be found, and 
you usually have to content yourself with more 
plebeian surroundings, and satisfy your soul with 
local colour of a humbler sort. 

Fate led us to San Samuele, and gave us a 
modest dwelling, shrinking back on a little Campo on 
the Grand Canal, placed between Ca Malipiero and 
Ca' Grassi, opposite the massive Rezzonico Palace, for 
which even Renaissance-hating Mr. Ruskin can find 
no word of blame. Thus we commanded a space of 
the great highway, and had a perfect Venetian view 
across the water, down winding Rio San Barnaba, 
with its bridge and brown tower, tall grey campanile, 
irregular patches of roof, and fan-shaped chimneys. 
The vine-trellis shading our Iraghetto, or gondola- 
stand, was a pleasant object in the foreground ; there 
was a sculptured well in the campo beside us, and 
the belfry of St. Samuel was built into our house. 



i88 VENETIAN WATERS. 

and bounded our scrap of roof-terrace to the rear. 
Viewed by moonlight from the canal, it seemed a 
fit scene for operatic love and crime. Cloaked hero, 
for instance, rushing on to the Campo from side- 
street L. to meet veiled lady tremblingly advancing 
from side-street R. ; impassioned duet before the 
row of gondolas — or footlights — interrupted by 
enraged parent issuing from palace R.F. ; fierce 
combat and clashing of swords ; organ music, pro- 
cession from the lighted church ; grand tableau — 
lovers saved by benevolent priest. 

Never live near a traghetto, say old Venetians ; 
and, we might add, never beside a well or in front 
of a belfry. But although at the cost of quiet, our 
position had undoubted advantages for Insight into 
local manners and customs. 

Daily at 5 a.m., St. Samuel's iron voice reminded 
us that we were in Venice, its vibrations shaking us 
in our beds. An hour later the clang of copper pails, 
clinking of chains, and shrill clatter of housewives' 
tongues announced the opening of the well. Soon 




CAMPO S. SAMUELE. 



SUMMER IN VENICE. 191 

the ringers were again at work in our belfry, the 
piercing whistles of the '* tram " steamers — most dis- 
turbing of modern utilities — began to resound from 
the canal, and the every-day business of Venice was 
fairly begun. As for the gondoliers of our traghetto, 
they were never quiet : all hours seemed alike to 
them. Like the poet's hackneyed brook, they too 
ran on for ever. They seldom ceased quarrelling 
with one another excepting to wage a fiercer war of 
words with their brethren of the opposite stand. 
Hailstorms of invective were always flying back and 
forth across the water. The only truce to the undy- 
ing feud was when both sides joined in volleys of 
bad language against their common foes, the penny 
steamers that have so wofully diminished their gains. 
One day one of these steamers chanced to foul the 
nearest landing-stage, and instantly the air was rent 
by the derisive howls of all the gondoliers within 
sight. But if our noisy crew had little work, neither 
did they take much repose. Towards 1 1 p.m. there 
would be a promising lull in their disputes ; they 



192 VENETIAN WATERS. 

would indulge in prolonged and prodigious yawns. 
Custom was growing scarce, there w^ere fewer foot- 
steps on the pavement, fewer cries of '' Poppe" — the 
signal for hailing a gondola to ferry you over the 
canal — came to summon them to their oars. Surely 
they would slumber at last, and allow silence to reign 
in our Campo ! Not at all ! Within half an hour 
they were livelier than ever — all fatigue had evapo- 
rated in yawns, and they had so much spare energy 
that they were driven to vent it in sudden bursts of 
stentorian song, and thus excite the emulation of 
their San Barnaba rivals. Luckily the air of Venice 
is soothing to new-comers, so we learnt the art of 
sleeping through the din, and it was difficult to wake 
at any hour without hearing it going on almost as 
briskly as before. The only tranquil time was just 
towards daybreak. 

A Venetian dawn in July is well worth the cost of 
a sleepless night, and its clear-eyed frankness as 
beautiful in its way as the mysterious fantasies played 
by moonlight on walls and water. Naturally here 



SUMMER IN VENICE. 193 

at San Samuele, midway up the Grand Canal, you 
miss the splendour of sunrise on the sea to be 
enjoyed from the RIva ; but lack of horizon Is almost 
balanced by the added suggestlveness of effects 
within the narrower range of vision. For Instance, 
this is what we saw during the small hours of a 
July morning. First, the soft twilight, that had 
never been gloom at any period of the brief night, 
gradually paled to a faint whiteness in which the 
slender, grey, angel-topped campanile down our 
favourite opening by the Rezzonico walls seemed to 
lose all substance and become a cloud structure — a 
mere film instead of a pile of stones. The sturdy 
brown tower of San Barnaba wore a deeper, warmer 
tint as the light grew and the stars died out. A few 
tiny cloudlets began to dapple the clear zenith, 
slowly expanded, and were slowly suffused by a deli- 
cate flush that presently deepened to a vivid rose, 
streaked with grey and backed by darker wool- 
packs. By this time the swallows were on the 
wing, circling swiftly in the air, and emitting their 

14 



194 VENETIAN WATERS, 

sharp, sweet note. Pigeons, too, were flitting down 
from cornice and house-top, with much velvety 
flutter and melodious wlilrr. Sparrows, pert and 
well-plumed, darted this way and that, and hopped 
lightly about the deserted pavement. One or two 
boats appeared on the canal ; the eyes of Venice 
were beginning to open for the day. Soon a great 
barge lumbers past laden with fresh water from 
the mainland. It Is so full that a bare few Inches of 
woodwork save the '' sweet water " within from 
mlnellns: with the brackish element without. How 
unkempt and sleepy-eyed are the red-capped bargees 
so patiently trudging the length of their craft, with 
shoulders hard-pressed to their puntlng-poles ! 
Theirs Is no easy trade ! With favourable wind and 
tide they have had at least an eight hours' sail ; with 
wind and tide against them, It Is sometimes a two 
days' journey. Yet their cargo of water only brings 
them five francs ! Having reached Its destination, 
the barge Is quickly tackled by a busy little engine, 
which, with much noise and fuss, distributes Its con- 



SUMMER IN VENICE. 195 

tents into smaller boats, that in their turn fill the 
public wells by means of far-reaching hose. This 
spectacle has a certain analogy with the dift'usion 
of knowledge by the daily press. Every one re- 
ceives his modicum of the precious supply ; but 
how few give a thought to the patient toilers, the 
pursuers of original research, who, like our bargees, 
have brought the knowledge from its distant source ! 

The sky was still bright with the freshness of 
early morn, there were blue spaces still mottled 
with rose ; but the tenderly blushing cloudlets 
had gone, just as the joyous smiles of infancy 
vanish in the gravity of manhood. Storm-clouds 
were now thickening over the lagoon to the south, 
and although unseen from our San Samuele win- 
dows, they had sent their messengers before them. 
Dark brownish masses began to encroach on the 
azure overhead, and this was already touched here 
and there by the tiny brush-strokes of the wind. 

Morning was full-blown now, and a cool breeze 
at last brought sleep to nerve us for the coming heat 
of the day. 



II. 

CAMPO SAN SAMUELE 





Campo San Samuele. 

N OWING that every inch of Venetian 
ground, every street and square and 
bridge, every Campo and Rio and Calle, 
L Salizzada and Fondameiita, has some 
historic associations to compare with those of the 
arched and pillared palaces that are better known to 
fame, we made haste to inquire into the past of our 
own humble Campo, and the humbler network of 
devious lanes in its rear. Putting aside one or two 
ugly tales of crime, the following are all the par- 
ticulars we were able to glean. 



200 VENETIAN WATERS. 

The Church of San Samuele, only open for early- 
morning service, pending repairs, dates from the 
beginning of the eleventh century, but having been 
twice partly destroyed by fire was almost entirely 
rebuilt in the seventeenth century, and our noisy 
belfry Is probably all that remains of the original 
structure. The church contains no works of art 
worthy of mention, but the parish is rich in artistic 
memories. 

Titian once possessed a studio hard by in the house 
of the architect Bartolommeo Buono. The sculptors 
Glulio, Tulllo, and Antonio Lombardo lived at San 
Samuele ; and It was the birthplace of Modesta da 
Pozzo, a learned lady of much repute in the six- 
teenth century. Paolo Veronese spent his last years 
in the Casa Zecchini, and died there in 1588 of 
a fever caught by taking part in a grand Easter 
procession. His sons and grandsons, painters all, 
continued to live there, and in their days the house 
was enriched by many of the elder Callari's works. 
GIrolamo Campagna, too, had once plied his chisel 



CAMPO SAN SAMUELE. 201 

and fused his bronze In the same building. Several 
artists of lesser note like GIrolamo PllottI, the fol- 
lower of Palma Vecchio, Ridolfi, the painter and 
biographer of painters, and Pletro LIterl, whose 
profitable brush enabled him to build himself the 
palace now known as Casa Morolln, also lived within 
sound of our bells. Here at San Samuele the noto- 
rious adventurer, Glacomo Casannova, first opened 
his audacious eyes, and may have passed his early 
years In squabbling on the Campo with other raga- 
muffins, hooking gondolas for a copper coin, and 
diving In the canal on summer nights, much after the 
manner of the nineteenth century imps, whose shrill 
voices made a frequent treble to the deeper tones 
of our gondoliers. And here. In later and compara- 
tively respectable days when employed as a spy of 
the Inquisition, he may perhaps have penned the 
famous report In which he denounced the possession 
by various Venetian gentleman of many impious 
and prohibited works. The list Is curious, and in 
eludes the w^orks of Voltaire and Rousseau, the 



202 VENETIAN WATERS. 

" Esprit" of Helvetius, the Bellsarius of Marmontel, 
sundry productions of Diderot and Crebillon, the " De 
Rerum Natura" of Lucretius, BoHngbroke's "Exami- 
nation," the writings of Machiavelli, Spinoza, &c. 
The pious criticisms of the white-washed rogue 
were somewhat sweeping in their range. His white- 
wash, however, had rubbed off by the time he 
composed his scandalous memoirs and miraculous 
escape from the Piombi, in the Bohemian castle of 
his last patron. 

Being flanked and faced by patrician abodes, our 
modest Campo has had its share of the festive 
shows for which Venice has at all times been 
celebrated ; but its noblest pageant must have been 
that of the wedding of Lucrezia Contarini and 
Jacopo, son of Doge Francesco Foscari, on Sunday 
the 29th of January, 1441. Then a crowd of 
patrician guests in festal attire, and mounted on 
gaily caparisoned steeds, rode to the Campo from 
all quarters of the town, and crossed the canal to 
San Barnaba on a bridge of boats erected for the 



CAMPO SAN SAMUELE. 203 

occasion. The Serenlssimo went in person to meet 
the bride at high mass in that brown - towered 
church, and later an open-air sermon was preached 
on the Campo without to a great concourse of 
hearers, " tanti zenti lomeni e puovolo che no se 
podeva andar in alcun luogo " — so many nobles and 
townsfolk that there was no room to stir. And in 
the evening the Bucintoro brought a hundred and 
fifty noble dames to lead the bride, escorted by a 
fleet of skiffs and gondolas to her new home in the 
Ducal Palace, where the wedding festivities were 
prolonged far into the night. Fortunately, no astro- 
loger seems to have dimmed the brightness of the 
day by foretelling how soon this joy was to be 
turned into mourning : the gay young bridegroom 
made the victim of relentless persecution, and his 
splendid father stripped of his state, and left to die 
of sheer misery in his family palace at the turn 
of the canal ! Foscari's successor, Doge Malipiero, 
also abode at San Samuele, and the sculptured 
archway of his palace in the Salizzada frames a 



204 VENETIAN WATERS. 

dainty garden scene with fountain and statues in 
the background. 

We are indebted to Signor Tassini's " Curiosita 
Veneziane " for many of the foregoing details. This 
volume is a valuable guide to Venetian wanderings ; 
gives the derivation of the nomenclature of canals 
and streets, and the legends and associations of 
every monument and building. It is of little use, 
however, from the artistic point of view, and Its 
Information is imparted in very dry-as-dust style. 
For genuine study of the stones of Venice there 
is of course no guide comparable to Ruskln's noble 
volumes. Putting aside abstract theories and mys- 
tical Imaginings that may or may not accord with 
the temper of your mind, it Is impossible to read 
those eloquent pages without gaining a new pair of 
eyes. It Is as though you had bathed your lids 
with the magic dew of fairy-land. You have at 
last learned the language of the stones. Every 
arch and capital, every moulding or fretwork or 
finial has suddenly acquired a new significance. 



CAMPO SAN SAMUELE. 205 

You recognize and appreciate exquisite details where 
before you only felt a vague and general enjoyment 
of a lovely whole ; you are guided to the discovery 
of fresh treasures, and Initiated in the arcana of 
architectural truth, or, as Mr. Ruskin might say, of 
that morality which Is the essence and logic of art. 

While on the topic of aids to Venetian study, 
the works of SIgnor Molmenti must not be for- 
gotten. His ''Vita privata di Venezia " is a store- 
house of interesting facts and details of Venetian 
manners and customs from the earliest times, and 
Includes a lucid account of the laws of Torcello and 
Rivo Alto. He describes the ceremonies attendant 
on birth, death, and marriage during many cen- 
turies ; we turn over the wardrobes of gentle dames, 
peep Into their kitchens and cupboards, and are 
shown inventories of their household goods. 

Then, in the same author's " Vecchie Storie," a 
dainty volume published by Messrs. Ongania, and 
Illustrated by the pencil of Favretto, we are served 
to some curious records and choice bits of scandal. 



2o6 VENETIAN WATERS. 

In one paper, " II Malclicente," perhaps the gem of 
the book, we are treated to extracts from the un- 
published correspondence of an eighteenth century 
gosslpmonger. The Abate Ballarlnl was agent and 
factotum to the Magnlfico Daniele Dolfin, Ambas- 
sador to the French Court from 1 780 to 1 786 ; and 
made it part of his duty to regale his employer 
with all the chit-chat and scandal of the town, as 
well as with every political rumour and event likely 
to be serviceable In Paris. . True parasitical spite 
pierces through the obsequious tone of these 
lively communications, for the Abate does not 
scruple to repeat every ill-natured criticism upon 
his Excellency's doings in France. He gives him 
full details of theatrical affairs in Venice, being 
quite aware that the Magnlfico has a special 
interest In the pirouettes of a certain fair dancer 
now performing in Venice for the first time on the 
San Samuele stage. He describes the splendid 
fetes given In honour of the Russian Grand Duke 
and his wife in 1782, and all the gossip of which 



CAMPO SAN SAMUELE. 207 

they were the theme. He is enthusiastic about the 
temporary theatre erected for a species of bull-fight 
in the Piazza San Marco, with a triumphal arch in 
the style of the Po7'te St. Martin! I But the Abate 
is nothing if not critical, and his tongue wags best 
when recounting malicious anecdotes of the leading 
beauties and personages of his time. The paper 
on Andrea Calmo contains much novel informa- 
tion on that sixteenth-century poet and dramatic 
artist. His comedies, written in dialect, probably 
merit the oblivion into which they have fallen, but 
his correspondence, to judge from the sparkling 
extracts given by SIgnor Molmenti, must be full 
of original pictures of sixteenth-century Venice. 

This humbly born Calmo, the son of a gondolier, 
was the pet of patrician society, the correspondent 
of the most prominent men of his age. He had a 
passionate love for his native city, " la nobile, 
digna, odorifera, grande, prestantissima, vereconda 
cittae de Venesia ; " and repeatedly sings the praises 
of the ''golden isles" of this "pleasant place, the 



2o8 VENETIAN WATERS. 

jewel of Italy." The y?/^i" of the old Republic are 
brought vividly before our eyes by his description 
of the entry of the Dogaressa Zllla Dandolo Priuli. 
How modern regattas 2Sidi freschi and Illuminations 
pale in comparison with the lavish splendour of the 
glittering Buclntoro ; the gold and silver brocades 
and precious stones of the noble company, the 
manifold decorations, draperies and festoons at St. 
Mark's ; the display of plate at the collation served 
hy five hundred bravely accoutred waiting- men, the 
forest of wax-candles ; the fireworks going on for 
six hours, the sumptuous public supper, the three 
days of dancing and merry-making! But now and 
then, in the midst of the mad whirl, the pleasure- 
sated poet changes his note to a cry of lament for 
the good old times when men wore leathern jerkins 
and women turned from their mirrors with un- 
palnted cheeks. 

In a paper on the Moor of Venice, SIgnor Mol- 
menti recapitulates the best-known hypotheses as 
to Othello's identity. He disputes the ingenious 



CAMPO SAN SAMUELE. 209 

theory of that learned scholar, Mr. Rawdon Browne, 
and suggests that the following anecdote, in a letter 
dated ist June, 1602, from Bishop BollanI to Ser 
Vincenzo Dandolo, may have reached Shakes- 
peare's ears, at the time when he was writing 
" Othello," and suggested the death-scene of the 
play. 

" The day before yesterday a Sanudo, living in 
the Rio della Croce, on the Gludecca, compelled 
his wife, a lady of the Cappello family, to go to 
confession, and the following night, towards the 
fifth hour, plunged a dagger in her heart and killed 
her. It is said that she had been unfaithful to him, 
but the voice of the neighbourhood proclaims her a 
saint."- 



15 



III. 

BY SIDE CANALS 




Bi2 ^ibc Canals. 



•* 




N a forlorn corner of Venice, not far 
from the Madonna dell 'Orto, where 
Cima da Conegllano's great picture Is 
enshrined, we come to the grass-grown 
Campo St. Alvlse, with its blistered garden-walls and 
cluster of crumbling buildings. There Is plenty of 
time to look about us before the bottle-nosed cus- 
todian comes shuffling over the bridge with the keys 
of the little-frequented church. We have come to 
seek the earliest productions of Carpaccio, and here 
they are on the wall of the nave, eight in all and mere 



214 VENETIAN WATERS. 

daubs, although the promising daubs of a gifted 
twelve-year-old boy. They are scenes from the Old 
Testament — Job and his comforters ; Solomon and 
the Queen of Sheba ; Tobit and the Angel ; Moses 
and the Tables of the Law; the Golden Calf; 
Joshua before the Walls of Jericho ; Joseph's 
Brethren imploring Forgiveness ; Jacob and Rachel 
at the Well. 

These early efforts of the future illustrator of the 
legends of St. George, St. Ursula, St. Jerome, &c., 
have little intrinsic worth, but much historic Interest, 
since all crudity and stiffness notwithstanding, 
they show the budding dramatic power and keen 
observation of the future master. And they are 
the only records of his youth, for few details are 
known of Carpaccio's life. Even the date of his 
birth is uncertain, but may be placed towards the 
middle of the fifteenth century, as he was an 
aged man at the time of his death, in 1524. The 
first of his great works is dated 1490, the last 
1522. It is a disputed point whether his name 



BY SIDE CANALS. 215 

was Scarpaccia or Carpaccio, a disputed point 
whether he was a native of Venice or Istria ; but 
recent research has almost decided this question in 
favour of the latter place. The St. Alvise panels 
bear the painter's usual signature. In the quaint 
representation of Jacob's meeting with Rachel, we 
at once notice the horse stooping to feed. The 
action is very truthful, and the forelegs have the 
defect — disproportionate length — common to all 
Carpacclo's horses. But, as in his after works, 
the story is capitally told, the central Idea seized, 
although the brush is feebly handled, and the draw- 
ing that of a child. ^ 

This poverty-stricken church must have once 
seen better days, for It possesses several excellent 
works of art. There Is a fresco by Bonifazio — The 
Last Supper — almost identical In composition with 
the oil-painting by the same master in the Florence 

I We have since heard the authenticity of these panels disputed, and 
attributed to a seventeenth-century imitator of Carpaccio. But Signor 
Molmenti, a great authority on Venetian art matters, declares them to 
be genuine. 



2i6 VENETIAN WATERS. 

Academy. The Judas is specially remarkable as a 
study in red and brown. Here, too, are a couple 
of Tiepolo's chefs d'ceiwres : the Scourging in the 
Temple, and Christ sinking under the Cross. They 
are noble paintings both for colour and design, and 
painted in the master's most serious mood. No 
frolicsome angels mar the solemnity of the themes. 
Nevertheless, like all this master's works, they bear 
a prophetic kinship with those of the French school 
of thirty years' back. They might have strayed 
from the walls of the Luxembourg to this decaying 
Venetian church. 

The last of the Venetian colourists is unfortunate 
in his surroundings, for some of his best produc- 
tions are hidden in the Palazzo Labia, in the 
Canareggio quarter, near the railway station, and 
are seldom discovered by strangers. The palace 
stands sideways to the canal, divided from it by a 
stretch of pavement. It fronts an unsavoury 
Fondamento, whence, after ringing at a blistered 
door, you pass into a spacious entrance hall, foul 



BY SIDE CANALS. 217 

with odours unmentionable and strewed with flakes 
of plaster dropped from the cracked and bulging vault 
above. A grandiose staircase faces the mouldy 
courtyard in the centre of the block. Ascending 
its grimy steps you are met by a frowzy portress, 
fit guardian of decay, whose slipshod feet lead 
the way into a lofty saloon with wide cracks in the 
walls and depressions in the floor corresponding 
with the unsightly bulges seen from below. Here 
are Tiepolo's frescoes of the loves of Antony and 
Cleopatra and the Allegory of Fortune. The 
visitor's first impression is one of blank disappoint- 
ment, for the story of the Egyptian queen is 
coarsely treated, though vigorous in design ; and 
this buxom, blowzy Cleopatra, with ruff and 
stomacher and powdered toupee, so ostentatiously 
melting her pearl before the enamoured eyes of 
her Roman General, is, to say the least, a droll 
anachronism. But there is a charming group of 
pipers and trumpeters in the background, delicate^ 
vapourous figures, somewhat after the manner of 



2i8 VENETIAN WATERS. 

Hamon. On the opposite wall is seen the arrival 
of Mark Antony, and on the ceiling the Allegory 
of Fortune, a truly excellent work. It is sad that 
treasures like these should be left to perish amid all 
this dust and decay ! A school of Mosaic workers 
occupies the front rooms, and you have to pick your 
way among heaps of glass cubes, pots of cement, 
and a confusion of benches, tables and boys, to 
obtain a view of the remaining pictures. The rest 
of the building is let off to tenants of the poorest 
class who air their rags on the sculptured window- 
sills and balconies. 

Sic traiisit gloi'ia mundi ! About a century ago 
this massive Renaissance palace was the meeting- 
place of the fashionable world, for the Labia 
exercised a princely hospitality, and had a private 
theatre, where many operas were acted by mario- 
nettes and sung by good artists behind the scenes. 

On the same day we gained admittance to the 
Palazzo Morosini, at Santo Stefano, one of the best 
preserved relics of olden Venice. It still belongs to 



BY SIDE CANALS. 219 

the MorosinI, and the present representative of the 
family allows It to be seen by special appointment. 
Landing at the water-door in a dark and narrow 
•canal, you are received by ancient serving-men 
with shrunken faces and loosely hanging coats, and 
ushered straight into the seventeenth century. The 
chilly entrance hall is adorned with quaint oil 
sketches of the thirty-seven strongholds captured 
by Francesco MorosinI in the Morea. The huge 
lanterns of his war-galley project from the end 
wall. There are full-length portraits of the con- 
quering Doge and of many illustrious ancestors. 
The Maggiordomo appears and gravely leads you 
upstairs Into a long suite of saloons with gorgeous, 
uncomfortable furniture, a large collection of 
pictures — good, bad, and indifferent — quantities of 
rare old china of Eastern and native fabric, and 
innumerable relics of the hero of the house, Doge 
Francesco, surnamed the ''Peloponeslaco." There 
is his bust in bronze, with memorials of his prowess; 
and the resolute features are those of a leader 



220 VENETIAN WATERS. 



of men. The one thing lacking to this typical 
Venetian dwelHng is an outlook on to the Grand 
Canal. Nearly all the windows open upon the 
'' Calle Stretta," or into mildewed courts ; and the 
only sunny corner, at the angle of Piazza Santo 
Stefano, is devoted to the armoury, filled with 
spoils of victory over the Turks. A forest of infidel 
banners and flags droop from the walls in heavy 
silken folds, amid a store of Pasha's tails, shields, 
trophies of arms and armour, guns and mortars, 
statues, busts, and bas-reliefs. This fortunate general 
captured no less than 1,360 pieces of artillery, 
and evidently looted on a vast scale, inasmuch as. 
the lion's share of his gains must have gone to the 
State. The sun streamed into this picturesque hall 
and through its wide casements. We looked on 
to the flower-filled terrace of Countess Morosini's 
private rooms. 

The gem of the picture gallery is Titian's portrait 
of Doge Grimani ; a marvellous painting of an 
astute old face, with piercing narrow eyes and 



BY SIDE CANALS. 221 

seamed with countless wrinkles. His union with 
Morosina Morosini can hardly have been a love 
match, on the lady's part at all events. Beside this 
masterpiece hangs a good Sir Peter Lely, repre- 
senting a bouncing blonde with frank blue eyes, 
supposed to be the portrait of Christina of Sweden. 

The collection naturally includes many scenes of 
Venetian life by the prolific Longhi ; they are very 
inferior to those in the possession of Mr. Rawdon 
Browne, but there are some female heads in pastel 
by the same master which are specimens of his best 
work. 

This home of the Morosini is almost the only 
notable Venetian palace still owned by the family 
for whom it was built, and no other has retained so 
rich a collection of art-treasures and relics. But 
even at burning midday in mid-July it was cold — 
cold as the grave. Surely only disembodied spirits 
could take their ease in those stiff and chilly saloons? 
We could imagine the long-deceased Doge and a 
select company of family ghosts gravely stalking 



222 VENETIAN WATERS. 

through them by night, and trying to warm them- 
selves by sipping hot coffee — for which the Doge 
had acquired a taste in the East — from the dainty 
cups so primly ranged on shelves during the day. 
That there are ghosts in Venice is known to every 
one. Is not that fine, grim-fronted palace at the 
turn of the canal, Palazzo Contarini delle Figure, 
perpetually changing hands, because no tenant can 
long endure its nightly horrors ? The present owner 
has stripped it of its furniture in the hope of getting 
rid of the ghosts, but no one takes it, and its 
supernatural occupants now have it all to themselves. 



IV. 

ON THE LAGOONS 




®n the Xaooons. 




N this summer season, when every hour 
of the day brings a fresh feast of colour, 
fresh enchantment, the charms of out- 
door Venice often outweigh those of 
churches and galleries. We feel sated with in- 
tellectual pleasure, dazzled by painted glories, 
wearied by study of different schools of art. It is 
better to be in the sunshine, out in the actual world ; 
to drift lazily in our gondola, and with no definite 
object in view, to simply enjoy the living scenes 
around us. Nowhere are the details of everyday 

i6 



226 VENETIAN WATERS. 

life so picturesque as in Venice. If the sun's rays 
prove too piercing, we tell our gondolier to moor us 
in the shade of the big P. and O. anchored off the 
Riva, and resting on our black leather cushions, 
survey the shifting panorama from this post of 
vantage in the centre of St. Mark's basin. 

There is the usual fleet of fishing boats by the 
public gardens, and their many-hued sails, brown 
and yellow and crimson and amaranth, are none the 
less effective against the foliage because of long 
intimacy. We have seen them on a thousand can- 
vases, panels, and bristol boards, yet they are always 
a delicious surprise. 

San Giorgio's slender tower seems half trans- 
parent against the delicate afternoon sky ; we can 
hear the voices of the soldiers on the barrack-ground 
at Its base, and we cannot see the ugly Palladlan 
fafade so awkwardly exalted on its preposterous 
stilts. Some covered gondolas are creeping along 
like black spiders in the distance ; and close to us 
sweeps past with rapid strokes a boat manned with 



ON THE LAGOONS. 227 

Dalmatian sailors. Their vigorous, blue-clad forms, 
crisp, brown locks and beards, honest faces and 
bright blue eyes look very familiar. Of course ! We 
have seen them before, somewhere on the shores of 
the Adriatic, in the funeral procession of two poor 
little twins — that is to say, in that noble symphony 
in blue, Michetti's picture of the Morticini. 

What a contrast between these stalwart men of 
the sea and the slender Lascars, whose turbaned 
heads project over the bulwarks of the P. and O. 
towering above us ! Here comes a fruit-boat laden 
with pyramids of crimson peaches and piles of green 
water-melons for the morrow's market. It lies low 
in the water, and like yonder skiff seems in danger 
of being swamped by the swell of the Lido steamer 
with its return cargo of bathers. These vaporetti 
are necessary evils during the bathing season, and 
so too are the trams that convey you across the sun- 
burnt Island ; but the crowd and turmoil of arrival 
and departure destroy half the pleasure of your 
dally plunge in the sea. Now a horrible sound 



228 VENETIAN WATERS, 

Strikes the ear, far echoing, yet sepulchral as a voice 
from Hades. It is the fog-horn of an enormous 
Greenock steamer slowly feeling its way down the 
channel to Malamocco. Gazing in that direction we 
are edified by the steadfast industry of a young 
painter. For he has tied his boat to a cluster of piles, 
fixed his easel on top and, standing with one foot on 
his gunwale and the other on a convenient post, is 
hard at work through the blazing afternoon, reliant 
on the handkerchief flapping from his hat for pro- 
tection from sun-stroke. His ardour excites applause. 
What painting executed in the comfortable seclusion 
of his studio could satisfy the soul of that young 
man so much as this study — probably of fishing 
boats — achieved under such difficult circumstances 1 
Little will he care for blistered nose or achino^ head 
when he looks at the result of his day's work ! 
How pleasant it would be to play the art-patron 
and purchase that sketch at a high price ! For it 
should surely be a talisman, conferring the gift of 
persistent effort ! 

What is this string of empty, brown-sailed craft 



ON THE LAGOONS. 231 

being towed by a tiny tug towards the Gludecca ? 
They are picturesque enough In their dingy, mud- 
stained way, but we view them with angry eyes, 
for they carry the dredglngs of Venetian canals to 
enlarge the works at St. Elena. A few months ago 
this same St. Elena was a winsome garden Isle with 
a half-ruined monastery and church ; and on passing 
through dusky courts and cloisters, you emerged 
into the soft, green light of a luxuriant vine-trellls, 
and looked on to the Lagoons over flowery lawns 
set about with lofty trees. Now trade and progress 
have seized on the unlucky Island, and by dint of 
mud and piles are extending It on all sides. A 
huge chimney Is daily mounting higher and higher, 
workshops are replacing the trampled flower- 
beds, and there are rumours of a bridge to connect 
it with the Lido for the passage of tramcars over 
the Lagoons. 

And this Is the end of the dainty pleasaunce 
where the girl- heroine of Mr. Sturgls's ^ delightful 

^ "An Accomplished Gentleman," by Julian Sturgis. 



232 VENETIAN WATERS. 

Venetian tale suddenly leaped into womanhood 
at the voice of Love ! 

May it not be said that the associations of fiction 

are even more precious than those of history ? A 

newly discovered document may at any moment 

befoul the memory of your best-loved historical 

personage ; but the heroes and heroines of romance 

defy vicissitude, and are crystallized in perennial 

goodness and beauty. It is strange how few Italian 

writers have used Venice as a background of fiction. 

Goldoni's comedies certainly give vivid portraitures 

of its eighteenth-century life ; and the fine novels 

of Ippolito Nievo and — in a minor degree — Castel- 

nuovo's '•' Quaderno della Zia," lead us up the 

stream of time into the fading splendours, the 

ferment of changing ideas of the waning Republic. 

But for vivid presentment of the colour and mystery 

of Venice, we have to turn to foreign writers : to 

Goethe and George Sand, to Shelley, Byron, Ruskin, 

and a host of lesser talents whose best inspirations 

have been born of the Lagoons. For instance, it 



ON THE LAGOONS. 233 

needs a poet's pen to describe the joy of sailing over 
the summer sea to this or that outlying island. The 
swirl of the parted waves makes cheery music as 
the wind swells the painted sheet rigged to your 
gondola. If the tide be low half the lagoon is 
changed into olive fields of sea-grass, dotted with 
groups of men and boys groping for crabs — belle 
bestze, as they are called here — and other shell fish ; 
and shrimpers wade through the shallows pushing 
their nets before them. 

And the lagoons are full of surprises. Out at St. 
Erasmo, the islet near St. Andrea del Lido, you seem 
suddenly transported to Holland. You glide up a 
narrow water-way between grassy banks hedged 
with bushes and pollards ; meadows and vegetable 
gardens lie on either side, and it is only on reaching 
a tiny landing-place in front of a tinier, red-tinted 
chapel flanked by tall cypresses, that you realize 
that you are still in Italy. Out into the broad 
water once more, and a few minutes bring you to 
the fort of St. Andrea with Its massive Palladian 



234 VENETIAN WATERS. 

basement. It was here that in old times the Bucin- 
toro was moored during the ceremony of wedding 
the Adriatic, but nowadays it is a place of punish- 
ment for refractory soldiers. A short stroll through 
the lush grass takes you to the outer corner washed 
by the surf of the open sea. The waters are still 
heaving with the half-spent rage of the previous 
night, and further out the white horses are tossing 
their crests in the sunshine. It is a long pull back 
to Venice with the wind and tide against us, and we 
envy the Chioggia boats which are able to sail so 
close to the wind, that they skim past with equal 
speed on almost every tack. 

Having no western view from San Samuele, 
nearly every evening we row " out to the west as 
the sun goes down." A short cut by the Priuli 
Canal, where Gothic facades alternate with humble 
modern dwellings ; past the home of Gaspara 
Stampa, the unlucky poetess, who learnt in suffering 
what she told in song ; past the marble blocks at 
San Gervasio, shaded by grand old acacias, gnarled 



ON THE LAGOONS. 235 

and twisted with centuries of life — brings us out 
among the merchant craft of the Giudecca Canal. 
The rays of the sinking sun make a burnished path 
on the water ; we are floating in golden light with 
rosy clouds overhead. We have passed the loungers 
on the Zattere, and the splashing, shouting boys 
swimming to and fro with fish-like ease ; the hum of 
the city is left behind, the sound of church bells 
comes softly to our ears over the glowing water. 
We are out on the Lagtma Morta ; see the green 
islets dotted over its polished surface, and the 
peaked Euganean hills rising from the sea like 
dusky amethysts into the golden haze. The after- 
glow brightens and fades, and in the solemn stillness 
of the gloaming we coast round the tail of the Giu- 
decca, past a no-man's land of brand-new islets. 
Their raw mud and sand will soon be clad with crops 
and vines like the luxuriant gardens hard by which, 
only a few years ago, were made in the same way 
from the dredgings of the canals. We wind about 
the shallows and mud-banks by narrow channels. 



236 VENETIAN WATERS. 

and skirt the groves and vineyards that once be- 
longed to the suburban retreats of the Venetian 
nobiHty. Fashion, however, has long deserted the 
Giudecca, and it is now given up to factories and 
workshops. 

The stars are all out, the moon rising, by the time 
we reach the open lagoon beyond San Giorgio. 
Lights are twinkling on the Lido, white-sailed 
schooners flitting down to Malamocco seem phantom 
ships suspended in the air above the intervening 
islands. Our boat drifts gently with the tide, but the 
channel piles are apparently gliding swiftly out to sea. 
Snatches of song float to us across the water, the 
rounded hulls of empty trabacoli slowly pass on their 
way to fetch fresh cargoes of wood from I stria, and 
moonbeams trace a silvery path for our return to 
Venice. 

St. Mark's is ablaze now with its pyramids of 
lamps, the band is playing, and crowds of gondolas 
are hastening towards the Piazzetta. The lighted 
window^s on the Grand Canal frame glimpses of 



ON THE LAGOONS, 



1X1 



bright interiors, pictured walls, and coffered ceilings. 
There has been a fire somewhere in the city, and we 
meet the engine returning to its station at Palazzo 
Manzoni. It hisses past with infinite fuss and fury, 
its funnel sending forth a constant shower of sparks. 
A most Incendiary engine : better suited, one would 
think, to set houses on fire, than to extinguish their 
flames. 




V. 

5. FRANCIS IN THE DESERT 




S^ jfrancis in tbe Besert 




UCH might be written of the Lido 
villages and sands, of the San Lazzaro 
convent — glowing like a pomegranate 
fruit among wreaths of foliage — of the 
ancient churches and flourishing glass-works of 
Murano, of the dreamful solitude and wonderful 
sculptures and mosaics of Torcello — only these are 
well-worn themes scarcely admitting of fresh de- 
scription. But far away in the north-eastern lagoon 
lies the unfrequented islet of San Francesco nel 
Deserto, with Its lonely monastery belted with 

17 



242 ' VENETIAN WATERS. 

cypresses to shield it from winter blasts, and with 
a solitary stone-pine set like a watch-tower at its 
southern corner towards Venice. 

This northern lagoon is of sterner beauty than 
the crowded w^aters to the south. Far away to the 
left it is bordered by a narrow strip of plain, backed 
by the mountain ranges of Friuli and Cadore. 
These sweep round its waters in noble lines and 
curves, broken here and there by shadowy peaks. 
On very clear days the soaring mass of the Pelmo 
and the snows of Mont' Antelao are distinctly visible ; 
and the aged Titian in his fine palace near the 
Fondamenta Nuove must have often cast wistful 
glances towards the giant guardians of his boyhood's 
home. To the right lie numerous verdant islets 
like loosely-strung emeralds, and the towers and 
domes of Murano do not long shut out the view of 
those of Mazzorbo and Burano, overtopped by the 
taller belfry of Torcello behind. The one repellent 
feature of the lagoon is the unsightly blank wall of 
the burial-ground of San Michele. " So small an 



S. FRANCIS IN THE DESERT. 243 

island," cries our boatman, *' and yet it can hold all 
Venice ! " But why need this place of rest wear the 
aspect of a dungeon for the dead ? Must a memento 
mori be inevitably as hideous as the death's head of 
a penitent's cell ? 

At low tide the shallows about Murano shine like 
burnished mirrors ; forests of weed wave unceasingly 
to and fro beneath their clear surface, and the green 
blades are studded with the little pearl shells that, 
when polished, are woven into the well-known 
trinkets that fill so many shop-fronts at St. Mark's. 

On the day of our voyage to San Francesco we 
ran aground among these shells; for while the 
veteran rowers of our companion gondola chose the 
circuitous route by the channel posts, our more 
daring Antonio attempted a short cut. He had 
never run aground, he said, and seemed convinced 
that his gondola could float in a tumbler-depth of 
water. But the waving weeds came nearer and 
nearer to the surface, we stuck midway, and 
Antonio and his handsome mate — the ideal of a 



244 VENETIAN WATERS. 

Stage brigand — had to turn out into the shallows and 
shove and tug for many minutes before we were 
again afloat. It was ignominious to have to go 
round by the channel after all, and be received with 
broad grins and mild jeers by the cautious rowers 
of the other boat. But Antonio laughed good- 
humouredly, shook back his curls, and, spreading 
his sail to the breeze, took us across the lagoon at 
a grand pace, far ahead of our friends. Past the 
forlorn islets where gunpowder is stored, and where 
forlorner sentinels watched our flight with wistful 
eyes ; past huge rafts, long and sinuous as sea- 
serpents, with little huts upon them, and patches of 
moss and lichen that spoke to us of the Tyrolese 
forests, whence they had been torn. Presently our 
course changed, our sail flapped, and leaving the 
huddled houses and factories of Burano to the left, 
we made straight for the ruddy tower of San 
Francesco nel Deserto. It is no uncheerful desert 
at this season, though doubtless dreary enough in 
winter storms and fogs. For its southern windows 




!lilli!#iS l' 



., 



% V 



m 



S. FRANCIS IN THE DESERT. 247 

look over to Venice, and through the summer haze 
walls, towers, and domes are faintly seen — vague 
and unsubstantial as a city of air. Far away to the 
west stretches the soft green line of the mainland, 
only broken by a few slender bell-towers, mere 
black lines against the thick cloud-curtains now 
veiling the mountain world behind. Grass-lands 
and belts of foliage close in the view to the east. 

A narrow causeway through a slip of meadow 
brings us to the convent porch, where a hale and 
portly Franciscan bids us a hearty welcome. But 
we defer our visit to the church ; our first duty being 
clearly to make tea for our thircty guests. By a 
gate bow^ered with flowering oleanders, we enter an 
orchard close w'here the gnarled and stunted trees 
are knee-deep In grass. We wade through It to 
the encircling dyke and its double row of cypresses ; 
and having found a sheltered shrine for our spirit- 
lamp, revel in the wonderful view. Our artist- 
friends seize their sketch-books, forgetting both 
hunger and thirst, for there are subjects on all 



248 VENETIAN WATERS. 

sides. Fantastic interchange of land and water 
formed by the scattered weed-flats and flowery 
meadows; the long shadows of the cypress trees, the 
ruddy tower and rounded chancel of the Lombard 
Church, the fan-shaped chimneys and irregular roof- 
lines of the straggling convent, the tender tints of 
the lagoon, and, best of all, the visionary city rising 
from the sea to the south. The beacon pine-tree is 
invisible from this side, and, being within the con- 
vent garden, may not be approached by female 
feet. 

Time passes quickly ; the sun is low. We seek 
our smiling friar and hasten into the church. It is 
a dim and shadowy interior at this hour, and little of 
the clear evening light finds its way through the 
narrow windows. Behind a grating near the high 
altar we are shown San Francesco's rock-hewn cell, 
containing a life-size effigy of the saint. We are 
puzzled by the geological anomaly of a rocky cave 
on a sandy isle ; but perhaps San Francesco brought 
it with him from Asslsi. On turning Into the choir 



S. FRANCIS IN THE DESERT. 249 

our Irreverence was checked by the apparition of a 
similar figure, equally emaciated and rigid, seated in 
the darkest corner of the church. This, however, 
was a living monk wrapt in prayer, and apparently 
unconscious of our intruding presence. Another 
haggard form slowly emerged from the shadows and 
disappeared through the doorway. It was re- 
assuring to glance at our stout Franciscan — there 
was nothing ghostly about him — and to follow his 
substantial tread into the outer court. Here there 
was little to attract the eye, but through a corner 
door we were allowed a glimpse of the inner cloister 
with delicate twisted columns, and a fine sculptured 
well surrounded by radiant beds of carnations and 
gladioli. Our jovial guide seemed justly proud of 
his flowers, and instantly bustled in to pick us a 
handful. He told us that the brethren were twenty 
in number, but this may have been a pious fiction 
in honour of his patron saint, for our gondoliers, 
who had frequently entered the convent, assured us 
there were only eight. Of course by law the com- 



2 so VENETIAN WATERS. 

munlty is suppressed, but the law cannot prevent 
the purchase of the building by some private in- 
dividual who brings friends to live with him, and 
chooses to dress in brown woollen robes. Of course, 
too, by law there is no clausura. 

Once a lady artist, burning to see some famous 
picture buried in an Italian monastery, presented 
herself at its gate, and urged her legal right. The 
case was submitted to the Superior, who blandly 
acknowledged that the law of the land entitled her 
to enter ; but added, that as by the rules of the 
Church cloistered ground was desecrated by woman's 
step, he was sure she would kindly submit to be 
carried in by her coachman. The lady went away 
without seeing the picture. 

But now the distant line of spires and domes, 
the arsenal walls and soaring tower of San Francesco 
della Vigna, stood out darkly against the glow of 
the great red sun ; and the thickening storm-clouds 
over Burano reminded us that seven miles of water 
lay between us and our home. We raced the storm 



5. FRANCIS IN THE DESERT. 251 

and won ; for although its ragged edges threatened 
to descend upon us, though thunder growled and 
lightning flashed, a sudden wind presently arose and 
drove it away to the north. It was high tide by 
this time, and there was much traffic on the lagoon. 
Painted sails were flitting in all directions ; we 
passed many Rialto-bound fruit boats and crawling 
barges with nondescript cargoes, and each and all 
added to the charm of the scene. We met a fat 
Franciscan returning to his cloister from a day of 
business — or perhaps pleasure — in Venice. He sat 
enthroned on a chair in a tiny sandalo, was sipping 
some cordial from a case-bottle, and gave us a very 
spiteful glance as we exclaimed at his pictorial 
value. 

Reaching the Fondamenta Nuova just as the 
lamps were lighted, we shot through the city at a 
splendid pace, and found all the gay world as- 
sembling to hear the band at St. Mark's. The stir 
and animation of the southern lagoon was almost 
bewildering in contrast with the silent waters behind 
us, with the cypress-girdled isle in their midst. 



' VI. 
FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK 





^festivals anb jfisberfolk^ 

OOKING back on those Venetian days 
their memory blends into a phantasma- 
goria of colour and sound, of lights and 
music and sunlit stir alternating with 
the sweet solemnity of moonlit waters. For sum- 
mer in Venice is a season of festivity, and although 
the unique spectacle of a Venetian regatta was 
missed this year, there were many picturesque sights 
to compensate for its loss. There was the yearly 
/e^e of the Redentore, with its procession of 
priests and banners ; when for two whole days a 



256 VENETIAN WATERS. 

motley crowd tramps incessantly to and fro over the 
bridge of boats thrown across the Giudecca Canal, 
and passes in and out beneath Luca-della-Robbia- 
like wreaths of living fruits garlanding the portal of 
the church dedicate to the Redeemer. There was 
the usual growth of tents and stalls stretching along 
the quays on either side, and hiding their everyday 
squalor by a profusion of flags and coloured lanterns 
and the shining brass chargers of the venders of 
f7ntelle. No wonder that the pilgrims — fisherfolk 
and peasants, soldiers and citizens — thronged to the 
lively scene. Plenty of cheap toys and gingerbread 
and ices and fennel for the weary children ; and 
solid food and drink and crisp /"r^/^//^, hot and hot 
from the pan, and improvised dancing-halls for the 
elder folks. And as the sun went down illumi- 
nations came out. Rockets and Roman candles shot 
into the air, and fancifully decorated boats, with 
lanterns shaped into the semblance of fuchsias and 
lilies, competed for the prize awarded to the best 
•device. 



FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK. 2S7 

Then, later on, gondolas fitted with bountiful 
supper-tables, decked with lamps and greenery and 
crowded with holiday makers, began to glide past. 
For was not this the Redentore fresco, when it is a 
time-honoured custom to spend the night on the 
water and cross to the Lido to see the sunrise ? But 
on this anniversary half at least of the Venetian world 
was drawn to the further end of the town to greet 
the arrival of Queen Margherita. Long before her 
train was due the broad water in front of the station 
was so thickset with boats that you might have 
crossed the canal dryshod. The court gondoliers, 
whose scarlet liveries and pointed hats made them 
seem half brigands, half postillions, had to struggle 
through a phalanx of intrusive prows, for the police 
were unable to keep a clear channel for the royal 
cortege. Every one wanted a sight of Queen and 
Prince, and pressed alongside with more loyalty 
than decorum. It was easy to understand why the 
Sovereign was seldom seen in her gondola, and pre- 
ferred to use the trim little steamer moored off the 

i8 



258 VENETIAN WATERS. 

palace garden. Thus at least she secured privacy, 
and a certain distance betwixt herself and the gazing 
crowd. It can hardly be one of the pleasures of 
royalty to have every movement scrutinized by 
thousands of staring eyes, and shortsightedness must 
be a positive boon to those born to the purple. 
What wretchedness too must be theirs if endowed 
by spiteful fairy godmothers with a downright 
craving for solitude ! 

Nevertheless the most w^orld-worn monarch — 
even a Charles V. at San Juste — would have 
owned the charm of this Venetian welcome. The 
canal was a wonderful sight, a shifting scene of 
fantastic splendour and mystery. For in place of 
the steady glare of ordinary illuminations, every 
palace on either bank started into life and light as 
the Sovereign passed: greeting her with a sudden 
glow of Bengal fires that revealed clusters of eager 
faces In every window and balcony, and shone on 
the thrusting, pushing, striving throng of gondoliers 
and gondolas below. The effect was magical. One 



FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK. 259 

moment a vista of dark water edged by shadowy 
lines of wall and roof, the next a vision of coloured 
splendour In which every detail of carven arch and 
pillar was distinctly seen, and the ripples flashed like 
liquid gems. 

Glancing back towards the Rialto, the moving 
throng below was impressively framed by Its arch, 
and the rows of human beings on Its parapet were 
suddenly transformed into crimson fiends. Then by 
dashing through the silent gloom of side canals, we 
gained the open water by the Palace Garden in time 
to see the procession sweep down the last reach of 
the Grand Canal amid gleaming lights and fireworks, 
bursts of the National Hymn and storms of enthu- 
siastic shouts. The basin of St. Mark's was a flower- 
garden of flame. St. Giorgio was ablaze with 
Bengal fires — red, white, and green. Ironclads and 
frigates had their yards dressed with coloured lan- 
terns, and the dancing lights on the lagoon were 
countless as the stars overhead. 

The royal visit brought many repetitions of similar 



26o VENETIAN WATERS. 

festivities. There were several official Serenades, 
when the town band embarked on a painted barge, 
decked with festoons of lamps and tinsel, was towed 
up and down the canal by dozens of straining rowers, 
alternately white as angels, or demons fiery red or 
ghastly green In the flare of the changing lights. 
And always an attendant fleet of gondolas crowded 
in their wake, seeming, as we heard a child say, 
''just like ducks round a swan." 

Then came the festival of Santa Margherita, 
when a thundering salute of twenty-one guns wished 
her Majesty many happy returns of the day, when 
every palace hung out Its banners and brocades, and 
the tricolour drooped In the breezeless air from the 
great standard poles at St Mark's. 

But on this, as it chanced, the hottest day of the 
year we fled the city turmoil, and started for Chloggia, 
in time to be deafened by the loyal guns of t|ie 
guard-ship, Varese. In the clear morning light 
every sculptured detail of the Ducal Palace was 
defined in strong relief, every shadow was Intensely 



FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK, 261 

dark. The lagoon was gay with fishers' sails of 
every tint from canary yellow to tawny brown. We 
were in a mood to be pleased with everything, for 
all lovers of Venice will appreciate the excitement of 
going down to the sea for the first time — for the first 
time to Chioggia ! What memories of olden strife 
and conquest, of besieging fleets and ducal pageants, 
of Goldoni's plays and of beautiful women are aroused 
by that one word Chioggia ! 

The tidal flats, those green fields of the sea, lay 
bare as we steamed down the channel — past S. 
Lazzaro and Poveglia and the Lido, to the waters 
near San Clemente, whence Venice is seen in its 
most Imposing aspect. But our holiday spirits 
sank ; for It was hard to enjoy the view in hearing 
of the woful cries and lamentations Issuing from 
that Isle of unreason. For on San Clemente stands 
the asylum for female lunatics, and it was strange 
to hear some fellow-passengers extolling the size 
of the building without seeming to realize the 
extent of suffering Implied by Its hugeness. Pre- 



262 VENETIAN WATERS. 

ventlble suffering, too, for the majority of the 
patients here and in the neighbouring hospital for 
males at St. Servolo are stricken by the pellagra, 
the disease which makes such fearful havoc among 
the poor wherever Indian corn is their only food. 
And during the years when this grain was subject 
to the grist tax and its augmented cost led to the 
use of damaged or adulterated flour, the number 
of cases was continually on the increase. It is 
sadder still to know that, although this canker may 
be checked in the early stage by means of nourish- 
ing diet, it is almost always incurable when it has 
once touched the brain, so that few pellagrosi ever 
quit these islands except for a narrower resting- 
place at San Michele. Thanks to shortsighted 
economists Italy has paid her debts with the bodies 
and brains of her agricultural masses ! 

More and more islets come in view, and we 
recognize the tower and trees of '' St. George in the 
Seaweed " far away on the burnished mirror of the 
Dead Lagoon ! The steamer stops now at a little 



FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK. 263 

jetty, and we see a confusion of brick walls, red 
roofs, and Venetian chimneys pierced by a narrow 
street leading to the dykes and fortifications behind. 
This is the village of Malamocco. The strip of 
land narrows fast, and the big vessels outside seem 
afloat in the shade of Its trees. 

Now a brand-new trabacolo skimmed past us 
Venice-bound. It had fair white sails, Its rounded 
hull was painted with broad, red bands, and it bore 
a tight cargo of firewood stacked half-mast high. 
After touching at the station near Fort Alberoni 
and the lighthouse, we crossed the wide and winding 
harbour, and skirted the long stretch of dwellings 
beyond the grass-girt church of San Pletro. Squalid 
grey houses and squalid grey lanes and dishevelled 
women sitting on their doorsteps busy with distaff 
or lace pillow. Now we reach Pelestrlna, a more 
thriving place, with an almost endless fringe of 
red-tinted houses, churches, and gardens bright with 
flowering oleanders and tamarisk plumes. Then 
at last the land tails off to Its backbone, the grtat 



264 VENETIAN WATERS. 

marble dyke that curves far out into the open sea. 
And our voyage is nearly done ; the steamer begins 
to roll as we cross the blue waves of the harbour 
mouth and then reofain smooth water close to the 
towers of Chioggia. 

Like Venice, this fisher-town is built on a cluster 
of Isles, and is sheltered from the sea by its minia- 
ture Lido, the island of Sottomarina out there by 
the harbour bar. No wonder that artists should 
flock to Chioggia, and paint and praise it uncea- 
singly ! For truly no artistic rapture can be pitched 
too high for its worth. It is a very carnival of 
colour. It has a turquoise and sapphire sea set 
with many-hued flights of sails ; a broad street 
flooded with sunshine, lined with arcades and bright 
with streaming flags. It has shadowy alleys wind- 
ing between balconied houses of the old Venetian 
red, crowned by Venetian chimneys, and leading to 
steep bridges over side canals. It has a clamorous, 
crowded fish market with marvellous effects of liiiht 
and shade, where sea-treasures of every shape and 



FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK. 265 

size and colour are stored In slippery heaps be- 
tween massive stone pillars of fourteenth century 
Gothic. Here strange monsters, horned and clawed 
and shelled, and gelatinous friitti di mm'e are 
offered for sale by picturesque boys all grins and 
mischief, brown-skinned and bright-eyed ; and men 
and women chaffer and quarrel with much dramatic 
gesture and pose. Truly a wonderful place ! Be- 
friended by fortune, we chanced on a street scene 
that would have sent a figure painter into an 
ecstasy of joy. A public auction of unredeemed 
pledges was going on at the door of the Monte di 
Pietd, attended by a crowd of spectators and an 
inner circle of well-to-do matrons. All wore the 
tonda, or white linen veil peculiar to the women of 
Chloggia. This curious article of attire is fastened 
round the waist like a petticoat and thrown over 
the head and shoulders. It is an excellent setting 
or the regular features, clear olive skins, brilliant 
eyes, and shining tresses of this handsome race, and 
is quite Oriental in effect. There were many beau- 



266 VENETIAN WATERS. 

tiful young girls in the crowd, and a few comely 
matrons. Even the very old women were cleaner, 
tidier, and less hag-like than those of the same class 
in Venice and the outlying villages. Yet these 
fisherfolk have a hard life of It, and the population 
is said to be decreasing. They all go to sea, and 
each year the sea claims its tale of victims. 

It was interesting to watch the faces of these 
clustered women, as various trinkets were put up 
for sale. A stately old dame, seated in the place 
of honour by the auctioneer, fingered a pearl 
necklet with evident interest. Perhaps she wanted 
it for her daughter's trousseau. It seemed worth 
as much as the string clasped round her own brown 
throat. A young mother with a child In her arms 
craned forward from the edi^e of the circle with so 
wistful a look, that we wondered whether she might 
not be the original owner of those unredeemed 
pearls. She wore none of the usual ornaments, 
save some tawdry ear-rings, her tonda was soiled 
and her dress in rags. 



FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK. 267 

Two spacious churches break the line of the 
arcaded main street, but they contain nothing of 
special interest. The fine Basilica and its ancient 
bell-tower are at the edge of the town at the end 
of this highway. The farther side of the church 
is flanked by the Piazza Vescovile, perhaps the 
most characteristic bit of this most pictorial city. 
The grassy space is shaded by lofty acacias fes- 
tooned with tawny fishing nets. A rococo marble 
balustrade set with statues of saints and colossal 
baskets of fruit opens on to a narrow canal. The 
Basilica built by Longhena is in course of repair, 
and we found its grand interior strewn with rubbish, 
obstructed by monster scaffoldings and ringing with 
the strokes of workmen's tools. It has a noble 
choir, many mediocre paintings, and a very ornate 
pulpit. The intense midday heat checked our 
wish to pass the city gate to the many piered bridge 
that strides across to the mainland, and we crept 
back to our waterside inn, thankfully clinging to 
the shelter of the arcades. Rest was pleasant 



268 VENETIAN WATERS. 

beneath the wide verandah overlooking the jewelled 
lagoon. Nor did we fail to do justice to the local 
dish — a savoury compound of rice and fish with the 
untranslateable title of pidoccJii di viare^ which is 
thoroughly w^orthy of its fame. 

Afterwards, like most visitors, we went out to 
sea in a topo, a roomy fishing-boat, with a ragged 
awning and patched brown sail, manned by a crew 
of four. Why four men to two passengers was at 
first a riddle, and none the less when it was seen 
that one devoted himself to conversation, another 
to slumber, a third to his pipe, and the fourth had 
the sole management of the craft. 

A sweet scent of hay greeted us as we skimmed 
past the meadow-Isle between Chloggia and Its 
sandy suburb of Sottomarlna. Here, landing by 
a row of squalid stone houses, we picked our way 
among pigsties, geese, and children to the giant 
sea-wall of the MurazzI, a grand dyke of marble 
blocks that thrust back the waves of the Adriatic. 
Then, returning by the outer edge of ten-Islanded 



FESTIVALS AND FISHERFOLK. 269 

Chioggia, we surveyed the great bridge leading 
to terra firma^ and came down the San Domenico 
Canal, the ship-builders' quarter, where innumerable 
topi, bragozze, and trabacoli in different stages of 
construction and repair lined the waterside ; where 
freshly-painted sails made warm patches of colour ; 
sun-baked urchins dived and begged ; and a clamor- 
ous chorus of female tongues recalled the scenes 
of Goldoni's '' Baruffe Chiozzote." Then, across 
the lagoon to the harbour mouth a brisk breeze 
bore us swiftly out to sea, and we solved the riddle 
of our numerous crew. The conversationalist of 
the party, a thick-set, ruby-nosed mariner, blandly 
suggested that with this favouring wind we might 
sail to Venice or the Lido, or at least to Pelestrina 
in about a couple of hours. Surely the Signori 
could not wish to go back by the steamer? His 
comrades too became eloquent, and all were ex- 
tremely disappointed by our mean preference for 
the punctuality of steam. The little plot having 
failed the whole crew leapt into activity, and made 



270 VENETIAN WATERS. 

a great show of occupation as though to justify the 
necessity of their presence. 

Skimming across the bay In the direction of the 
mouths of the Adige, the colour of the water com- 
pletely changed. The metallic blue of the lagoon 
and the green waves of the open sea were ex- 
changed for luminous pale blue and white where 
the river water reluctantly mingled with the salt. 
On returning to Chioggia we had time for another 
scene of street life before our steamer gave its 
warning whistle. In a shady corner near the 
market we halted to watch an artist who was 
sketching a sleeping child. His work completed, 
he dropped some pence into his model's hand. 
The crowd of capering ragamuffins instantly dis- 
persed, and we presently found them round the 
corner all stretched upon the ground and all fast 
asleep ! 

As the shadows lengthened the wind fell, the 
heat increased, and we steamed back to Venice 
over a breezeless sea of glass. 



VII. 

AT THE ARSENAL 




Ht tbe Hrsenal 




NDER the spell of Venetian enchant- 
ment it is vain to try to remain in the 
nineteenth century. The web tightens 
!1 daily, and a hundred silken strings 
draw you gently but firmly back into the past. 
You declare perhaps that you are sated with sights, 
content with everyday life, yet all scenes of every- 
day life in this wonderful city are rich in historic 
suggestion, are mere survivals, ghosts and phan- 
tasms of better and nobler things. 

For instance, chancing one afternoon to row idly 

19 



274 VENETIAN WATERS. 

across the Giudecca, we beheld rows upon rows of 
paintings hung outside a house and framed with 
flags and bannerets. This exhibition was in 
honour of the fete day of the champion rower of 
the Niccolotti faction. For many centuries the 
mariners and gondoHers of Venice have been 
divided into two parties, known as Niccolotti and 
Castellani, after the two extreme points of the 
city, San Niccolo and San Pietro di Castello. 
The former are distinguished by black sashes 
and caps, the latter by red. There has always 
been keen emulation between the two companies, 
although party spirit has never led to the faction- 
fights of other Italian cities. Their warfare is 
chiefly carried on in words, and regattas now afford 
them their only fields of contest. The open-air 
picture show at the Giudecca comprised portraits 
of victorious Niccolotti of many different periods. 
They had greater antiquarian than artistic merit, 
and showed successive changes of costume, ranging 
from slashed doublets and jerkins to flowered waist- 



AT THE ARSENAL. 275 

coats and knee-breeches, and again to the easy 
white dress of modern times. A few of the recent 
portraits were really good paintings, and one — 
that of a handsome, spirited youth, waving his 
emblem of triumph against a dark green back- 
ground — was a very harmonious study of colour. 
The winner of perhaps last year's regatta ! Surely 
that was quite of the nineteenth century ? Never- 
theless this poor little survival, the picture-decked 
house on a mean and dingy quay, called up a 
swarm of greater scenes. Did not red caps and 
black always fight for precedence in boarding 
Genoese and Turkish galleys, or storming pirate 
strongholds, and were not their rival feats and 
games prominent events in all the great festivals 
of the Republic ? And on Holy Thursday, the 
day of yearly commemoration of the victory of 
the Venetians over the Patriarch of Aquileia in 
1 1 70, chosen bands of Caste Hani and Niccolotti 
performed their famous Labours of Hercules in 
presence of the Doge and all the authorities of the 



276 VENETIAN WATERS. 

State. Every game on that occasion was symbolic 
of triumph in war. The feats of Hercules, an acro- 
batic display of strength, represented the agility of 
the Venetians in climbing masts, boarding gal- 
leys, scaling fortress walls. The Moresca was a war 
dance, the fireworks the burning of the Patriarch's 
castles, while the bull-fight, ending with the skilful 
beheading of the unlucky animals, typified the 
final defeat of the Patriarch and the ignominious 
tribute exacted from him. In the same way, now-a~ 
days, Doge and Senate, and Council of Ten, splendid 
patricians, multi-coloured masks, surging crowd,, 
clashing bells and flourish of trumpets, are all re- 
called by a few yards of painted canvas, emblematic 
flags, tinkling of ice-tumblers and a handful of 
unexcited spectators. 

But at last the nineteenth century asserted its 
strength and almost exorcised the ghost of ancient 
Venice by an essentially modern scene. This was 
the launch of an ironclad christened bv the Oueen. 
Half Venice was streaming across the lagoon and 



AT THE ARSENAL. 277 



down the Riva to the lion-guarded Arsenal door 
long before the gay little steam launch dashed 
through the bridge to the water-gate with its 
punctual cargo of royalty. It was true ''queen's 
weather," the August sun tempered by a delicious 
breeze. A hurried walk through dusty yards, past 
countless workshops, brought us at last to the 
stands reserved for invited guests, facing the huge 
scarlet hulk upreared on a forest of timbers. 
Secured by miles of cordage and chains and 
beams, the Amerigo Vespucci seemed fixed for life 
on its monster crutches. Bands played, the crowd 
buzzed ; all was stir and movement and expecta- 
tion. A train of priests and acolytes, looking like 
flies at an elephant's feet, moved slowly round the 
iron-plated mass, and w^ith prayer and holy water 
gave spiritual blessing to this type of material force. 
Then an increased stir and murmur of the thronof !' 
Queen Margherita, fair and smiling, clad in shim- 
mering satin and soft white lace, surrounded by a 
bevy of court ladies, and officials in embroidered 



378 VENETIAN WATERS. 



uniforms and plumed hats and followed by her litde 
son arm in arm, widi a very tall and stately matron, 
was seen ascending the platform built up under the 
bows of the unchristened vessel. Then, pulling a 
blue ribbon, the royal godmother dashed a bottle 
of champagne against a few inches of red paint 
amid a tempest of applause and the rollicking 
strains of the National Hymn. Then the proces- 
sion having returned to the grand stand, officials 
began to fly hither and thither, gold lace glittered 
in the sun, plumes fluttered, words of command 
issued from the shade of the cocked hats. A few 
moments of silence, expectant silence, suddenly 
broken by a trumpet call, a few rapid axe-strokes, 
and, as if by magic, the first huge beam on either 
side of the Ironclad slid from its place and was 
instantly tugged away by a swarm of men — much 
as Mr. Gulliver must have been dragged by his 
Lilliputian conquerors. A dozen times the trumpet 
sounded, a dozen times a buttress fell, until the 
eighty metres' length of scarlet iron was bare, un- 



A T THE ARSENAL. 279 



supported and only held in place by the hawsers 
and timbers at Its bows. Now came a dead pause, 
the tongues of the crowd were still ; and the crew 
of workmen, high In air on the deck of the 
Amerigo, stirred neither hand nor foot. For the 
next moment would test the success of their 
patient labour. The chief carpenter mounted to 
the bows, his huge hatchet flashed In the sun, dealt 
a few mighty blows, and suddenly wood, iron, and 
cordage relaxed their grip, and lightly and easily 
as a paper boat, the Aine7ngo Vespucci glided stern 
foremost Into the welcoming waves. 

Perhaps none but eye-witnesses can realize the 
excitement of that moment, the contagious joy of 
successful achievement. Even now, after many 
months, a thrill runs through the writer's veins 
at the memory of that scene. No sublime nor 
beauteous scene to the outer eye ; for a mountain 
of painted metal, grimy workmen, calico-covered 
boards and a fashionable crowed have few elements 
of pictorial worth. But it was a triumph of human 



28o 



VENETIAN WATERS. 



skill, of mind over matter, and the burst of nine- 
teenth-century enthusiasm was probably equal to 
that of republican Venice, when the war galley 
built In one day was launched from the same spot 
in honour of Henry III., monarch of France and 
Poland. 

This was our last Venetian spectacle, and with 
it this record of summer diversions may fitly come 
to a close. 







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